03 Color & Tone Adjustments
The sliders here are pretty basic and the sort of thing you’d expect from an entry-level image-editor – but they’re fine for fixing everyday exposure and colour problems.
Here, I’ve pushed the Contrast slider right up to maximum, reduced the Brightness to bring out the colours and intensity, then moved the Shadows slider to stop the background disappearing into total blackness.
04 Vignette
It’s interesting to see a whole panel devoted to vignettes, which you might think is a fairly specialised image effect rather than an everyday adjustment, but the retro look is popular today so you can kind of understand it. I’ve used a vignette here to darken the surroundings for this corroded metal plate. My main subject is central in the frame, but it’s good to see there’s a gadget for re-positioning the centre of the vignette if you need to.
05 Sharpening
The tools in the Sharpening panel are especially interesting because they don’t just concentrate on the on-screen sharpening effect – they will also optimise the sharpening for output devices like computer monitors and printers. There are different types of sharpening too, which could be worth exploring in a future post.
There are also buttons at the top of the screen for zooming in, and a navigator panel alongside for panning round the photo while it’s magnified.
06 Effects and Layers
Here’s my finished image, which is returned to the Layers module after I’ve finished with my enhancements. The Layers module is at the heart of the Perfect Photo Effects 8 suite, and enables you to mix and blend effects you create in other modules. It also lets you combine separate images into layers from within Aperture or Lightroom, which is another reason to look as Perfect Photo Suite 8 as a potential Photoshop replacement.
See also
More Perfect Photo Suite tutorials