As multi-featured imaging apps such as ON1 and Luminar add automated portrait retouching to their feature sets, Anthropics answered back with the December 2020 launch of PortraitPro 21 image-editing software, powered by artificial intelligence and packed with a slew of new retouching tools.
Portrait Professional or PortraitPro is a Windows and Mac based portrait imaging enhancement software targeted at professional and keen amateur photographers. Developed by Anthropics Technology Ltd and first released in July 2006, it has been in continuous development ever since. PortraitPro is the world’s best-selling retouching software. Using Artificial Intelligence, PortraitPro enhances every aspect of a portrait for beautifully natural results. Portrait Pro 12. OLD VERSION - NOW DISCONTINUED. PortraitPro 12 from Anthropics Technology allows anyone to improve portrait photographs with ease. All aspects of a portrait can be enhanced with intuitive and simple controls. Anthropics Portrait Pro Editing Software Review. CODES (7 days ago) Anthropics Portrait Pro is an amazing tool for those who are new to retouching portraits. It is simple, yet incredibly powerful and gives you pleasing results within seconds.
Portrait Pro remains the go-to program for serious portrait retouching. You can purchase any or all of the Anthropics PortraitPro 21 editions here. Stan Sholik is a photographer/writer in San Clemente, CA.
PortraitPro 21 remains available in three editions: PortraitPro Standard, PortraitPro Studio, and PortraitPro Studio Max. All editions feature AI-powered portrait editing, including the new features I describe below as well as background removal and free customer online support.
[Read: Portrait Perfection with Anthropics PortraitPro and PortraitPro Body]
The basic standalone PortraitPro Standard edition is targeted to amateur photographers. It only accepts JPEG or 24-bit TIFF files and is priced at $54.95. PortraitPro Studio is the edition for professional photographers that doesn't need full batch processing capabilities. The $84.95 Studio version accepts all common file formats including JPEG, TIFF, RAW and DNG up to 48 bits. It also includes plugin support for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. PortraitPro Studio Max—which I am using for this review, both as a standalone and a Photoshop plugin—includes all of the features in the Studio edition, plus fully automated batch processing for professionals with large numbers of files to correct. MSRP of PortraitPro Studio Max is $169.95.
[Read: 16 Software Editing Programs for Every Skill Level]
What's New in Anthropics PortraitPro 21: Retouching Tools
The new features fall into two general categories: those that build on or add new features designed specifically for portrait retouching, and those that move PortraitPro closer to becoming an all-in-one image enhancement program for portrait photographers.
New portrait retouching features include a lighting brush, a hair highlighter, improved catchlight controls, and a master slider for skin lighting and coloring. There are a series of new lighting brushes in PortraitPro that recognize foreground from background and allow you to modify highlights and shadows and add lighting effects ranging from light flares to realistic relighting effects.
The new hair highlighter allows you to add subtle highlights to hair, change hair color completely, or add the ever-popular dark-roots-to-lighter-hair-tips style to single color hair. Should the automated retouching in PortraitPro 21 still leave undesirable elements in the skin, the new clone tool allows you to manually remove them. The improved catchlight control and master skin slider enhance previous PortraitPro tools.
A new set of tools that allows portrait photographers to complete more operations within PortraitPro promises to speed up and simplify workflow. These include sky replacement, color styles, the new clone tool, de-noising and sharpening, a history tool, color styles and more free stock images.
I was most excited about the new sky replacement feature. Using AI technology from Anthropics LandscapePro software, foreground and background images were said to be automatically masked and the sky color subtly blended into the foreground portrait. A good selection of skies is built into the program, but best of all, you can use your own library of skies (but not in the sky replacement tool).
When the automated skin controls in PortraitPro still don’t eliminate a blemish fully, the new clone tool is a blessing. It allows the manual cloning of one area to another, preserving tone and texture and keeping you inside the program without the need to use other software. De-noising and sharpening likewise keep you focused within PortraitPro and on your retouching. With the new history tool, you can revisit and modify previous steps you have taken. The color styles presets and the availability of more stock images encourage you to experiment and to push your portrait photography in more creative directions.
User Friendliness and Navigability
User friendliness has always been a high priority for Anthropics PortraitPro 21 throughout its development. PortraitPro 21 is no exception. For new users and even seasoned users like myself, the 20 video tutorials on the opening screen will quickly get you started or quickly refresh your memory of features and workflow within the program. An additional tutorial is very helpful if you plan on using the Studio and Studio Max versions with Photoshop.
Each tutorial begins with a quick video showing a possible outcome. Then a step-by-step tutorial walks you through the various associated tools while you retouch a preview image. With the new hair retouching tools, I thought I’d take a look at the tutorial, and it was so well thought out and informative that I looked at many of the others even though I thought I was familiar with the techniques. I wasn’t as familiar as I thought.
There are also pop-up tool tips for many of the tool categories and the tools themselves. These are especially helpful for new users, and experienced users can turn them off in the Settings menu.
While investigating the other options in the Settings, I came across the GPU tab. It turns out that in order to use the power of your video card GPU, you need to click on a link to download and install a GPU support pack from Anthropics. After I did this on my Windows 10 machine with a late-model NVIDIA card, PortraitPro crashed. I needed to reinstall the program. Proceed with care if you choose to try this.
Anthropics PortraitPro 21: What Works
Generally, everything works as expected. The additions to the portrait retouching tools are particularly impressive. The lighting brush works well and allows you to dodge and burn with a brush by choosing white or black to adjust your lighting from minor tweaks to major changes. You can also use the lighting brush to change the hue of areas by choosing a new color or increasing the saturation of a color by matching the image color with a color you choose. I wish there were an eyedropper to more accurately select image colors.
The new hair highlighter, color change and other hair adjustment options are really useful. Even making massive color changes from dark brown to blond work well, though your portrait subject may object. The highlighting options are also fun to experiment with, especially for photographing seniors.
The clone tool, color style, free stock images will be welcomed by users who need them. The new history tool usually backs you up to a previous state, but like all history tools, when you move forward, you delete all the states after the history state chosen. You can always save snapshots to preserve a state before moving forward in history.
Anthropics PortraitPro 21 Features That Didn't Work As Well
Having replaced backgrounds in previous versions of PortraitPro using the Layers>View/Edit Background Mask, I was excited to try the new AI Sky Replacement tool but disappointed with the results. Every masking tool has issues when masking a model's hair, but I found the issues in Sky Replacement when attempting to replace a bland sky behind the model with a better one impossibly insurmountable. While it seems to have the same tool set to clean up the initial mask as I am used to using in PortraitPro, they didn’t work nearly as well. I was unable to create a good background mask around the hair even when I devoted more time to it than it required using the old technique. And while I could use my own collection of skies and clouds with the old technique, the only sky options presented in Sky Replacement are those built into the software. I found no way to select my own skies folder.
I was also disappointed in the history tool at times. For example, it never saved the sky replacement step when I performed a sky replacement. I wanted to return to the state prior to my sky replacement when I was unsatisfied with the result, but I was unable to.
How PortraitPro 21 Comparesto Other Multi-Function Editing Programs
Although the mainstream multi-function editing programs are catching up quickly, they do not, at this point in time, offer the full range of portrait retouching options found in any of the editions of Anthropics PortraitPro. If portrait, event, group and senior photography is your profession, there is no better portrait retouching program for you than PortraitPro Studio or Max. Several of its previous competitors such as Imagenomics Portraiture and Digital Anarchy Beauty Box have disappeared, gone to video retouching or simply not advanced enough to compete. Portrait Pro remains the go-to program for serious portrait retouching.
You can purchase any or all of the Anthropics PortraitPro 21 editions here.
Stan Sholik is a photographer/writer in San Clemente, CA.
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