CameraBag Pro 2024 verdict
Summary
CameraBag Pro is a photo editing tool from a company you might never have heard of, at a price which might make you think it can’t be very good. Well, it’s not clear why this software isn’t better known, but the bottom line is that it’s very good indeed. It comes with 200+ photographic effect presets, and they’re of a pretty high standard, plus all the tools you need to modify these and make your own. It even does basic photo enhancement and file browsing. It’s quirky and weird – at first – but at this price, and subscription-free, it’s an absolute steal.
Pros
+ Excellent analog/effects presets
+ Works with video as well as stills
+ Wide choice of adjustment filters, or ‘tiles’
+ Now with AI denoising and upscaling
+ Cheap to buy
Cons
– Basic image browsing tools only
– Strange/unique interface
What is CameraBag Pro 2024?
CameraBag Pro 2024 comes from Nevercenter, which is more like a small-scale co-operative than a multinational corporation. As well as a cheaper, cut-down version just called Camerabag, Nevercenter also publishes a 3D modelling and rendering application called Silo & Milo, and a pixel art program called Pixelmash.
At the time of writing, CameraBag Pro 2024 is on sale for $34 (usual price $49) while the basic CameraBag is $17 (usual price $24). Frankly, though, the Pro version is so cheap it’s the one I would instinctively recommend.
CameraBag Pro is available in both Mac and Windows versions, and there’s a 7-day fully-featured trial version if you need a little time to make your mind up. I always recommend checking out trial versions first.
It’s essentially a filter effects tool in the same vein as ON1 Effects, for example, or perhaps Color Efex, from the DxO Nik Collection. It’s a standalone program and doesn’t have a plug-in version, but that’s no problem for Capture One, which can use any number of external editors, while in Lightroom Classic you would simply have to configure it as one of the two available external editors in the program preferences.
CameraBag Pro 2024 design and usability
CameraBag’s interface is completely different to anything else out there. After a while, though, you’ll figure out that it has all the same components as other effects software, just in a new and alien arrangement.
The interface is really very simple. Most of it is taken up by a large preview of the image you’re working on, and all the tools are organized into a single tabbed sidebar on the right side of the screen.
The first tab is labelled Adjustments and displays all the individual tools you can use to edit your images. These are organized into sections: Basics, Advanced Light, Advanced Color, Photographic, Masks, Borders, Utility. There’s a lot here, and CameraBag offers a lot of editing scope for a very small outlay.
When you apply any of these tools, it appears as a ‘tile’ underneath the image. You can add as many tiles as you like to create a cumulative effect. You can rearrange them into a different order to control which is applied first, and you can even ‘nest’ them into a single tile if you need to carry out more complex edits. You can click on any tile to adjust its properties, using sliders or gadgets that appear alongside or above. The options are basic but effective, and the simplicity is often welcome.
If you just want some ideas and inspiration, you choose the Presets tab instead. Here there are 200+ different presets organized into categories for Architecture, B&W Essentials, B&W Films, Color Correction, Color Essentials… I’ll stop there because it’s a long list.
Each of these presets applies a pre-configured set of tiles and adjustments, which are shown beneath the image. You have full control. You can add or remove tiles, change the order, ‘nest’ tiles for masking with CameraBag’s masking tiles and, if you like the effect, you can save your edits as a new item in the My Presets category.
There is one thing to note. CameraBag does not have its own bespoke file format, so you can’t save an image and then come back to it later to find all your tiles and adjustments still available. When you save an image, it’s in a generic format like JPEG or TIFF – so it’s all the more important that you save any custom look that you may want to use again as a preset. This is not a non-destructive editor.
CameraBag Pro 2024 results
Every time I use CameraBag Pro I’m surprised at the quality of its preset effects. Normally, inexpensive software from little known developers might not offer much subtlety or finesse – but CameraBag is the exception. Its photographic effects presets are genuinely on a par with more expensive and better known photographic tools like ON1 Photo RAW, DxO Nik Collection or Lightroom presets.
I’d say the Architecture presets have a very tenuous connection with architectural photography, but the B&W Essentials presets are great, encompassing a range of fairly ‘straight’ black and white renderings, but with a considerable variety of looks. This kind of merges into the next section, B&W Films, where there are more black and white looks – though its not clear how the previous category is really much different to this one.
The Classic Photography section is where it gets really interesting, because this is where you’ll find some of CameraBag’s most compelling and inspiring looks. From here on in, you’re in much more interesting territory. Further down there are sections for Film Stock, both motion and still, Film Techniques such as bleach bypass, cross processing and redscale, a Pop Art section and one for Summer Flares (light leaks). There’s a lot to explore and try out.
CameraBag Pro does have limitations. It does offer a File Browser panel for locating and viewing images you want to work on, together with a (slow loading) Quick Look panel to browse images as larger thumbnails, but it’s all very basic with no other organizational tools, not even albums.
And while CameraBag Pro can open images directly, if you’re working with RAW files it may not be able to apply lens corrections. If your camera embeds them in the file, such as my Olympus PEN-F, for example, you’ll be fine, but I also use a Canon EOS R8, and Canon does not embed correction profiles. I can open EOS R8 files, but lens distortion is not corrected and CameraBag does not have any tools for doing this manually.
For this reason, I think I’d use CameraBag Pro as an external editor for a host program like Capture One or Lightroom, where I’d do the RAW processing first before handing the image off to CameraBag.
Also, while the new AI Denoise and Upscale options do quite a good job, these are also processes I’d rather carry out in more advanced or effective tools from DxO (DeepPRIME) or Lightroom (Enhance), for example.
CameraBag Pro 2024 verdict
CameraBag’s browsing tools are basic and its interface is odd to say the least. But if you stick with it and spend some time exploring it properly, you’ll realize that it has an impressive array of editing and effects tools and a wide range of effects presets which are really very good – they do feel as if they have been developed by people with a proper sensitivity towards photographic processes and tastes.
That in itself is pretty remarkable, but even more remarkable is how little this software costs. You’re not dragged into a subscription plan, either. A single payment covers all updates for a year and, even if you don’t renew, the software will carry on working as it has done, for as long as you want.
I can’t say I would use CameraBag for every image, but there have been many, many times when I’ve remembered a particular look it has and how well it might suit an image I’m working on, and used this instead of one of my other regular effects tools. And at this price, it hardly matters if you don’t use it all the time.
