It's enough to keep me quite busy and do away with my PicMonkey subscription. This has a lot of fun extras in it, like clip art stuff, frames, and little finishing items to spruce up your pictures, add more professionalism (or fun!) to them, and so on.
I definitely wanted a program where I could change around colors or, for instance, have an image in black and white and then one featured part of the image colored bright red - and this actually does the job well! The deblur feature is kind of hit or miss, depending on how severely your image is "blurred," but on the whole, it can lend a helpful hand in getting your image to look way more distinct and workable. It was able to recognize my oldest son's face at ages 6-14 with success (for the most part, unless the face was angled strangely), and even though my youngest son looks similar in features as him, it seemed to know the difference. This has a facial recognition feature that's nice to use for managing your photos and easily sort through them. I'm somewhat of an amateur, but I found that I was able to do WAY more with this than other similar programs. You can combine and create really cool stuff from your images and graphics with their layer editing features, and it's a lot of fun to play around with.
If there was any one item that I like the most about this, it's the layering.
This impressed me more than I was expecting it to do, and I like that I don't have to continue paying monthly fees in order to use the features like other more professional programs that are similar in genre.
This Cyberlink PhotoDirector 11 Ultra computer PC program was easy to install, although I was using the CD format to install it, as I am "old school" that way. If a friend asked me what I'd recommend right now for everyday processing I would not fail to mention this. What I think PhotoDirector is right now is an affordable yet powerful alternative to Adobes offerings.
I won't try to say this software is a polished product it is a little rough around the edges and if you already use Adobe products there is no reason to switch. The magnetic lasso as well as the smart brush selection work a little better and help when you're going heavier edits. You need to experiment with each and sometimes the results are very anti-smart. Their different smart selection/clone/remove tools are a a nice addition but results are a little more mixed. HDR sometimes takes some decision making but I've enjoyed the results and included a couple on my review. Panos stitch effortlessly even out of order collections. I get a little carried away with HDR and panoramas and being able to merge these in a single workflow tool alone makes me sold on PhotoDirector. Being able to fix horizons and alignment is wonderful. I shoot a lot on an Insta360 One X and while their software is nice you can really fine tune things in here. The first thing that got my attention is it's 360 photo editing. What I really like about this software is the "other" tools it includes. I've been able to get everything I need done for adjusting exposure and picture angle type things. There is also a slideshow mode tucked in there and hey, I'm not complaining but it feels a little out of place in a workflow. From here on out you move from standard adjustments->their fancy adjustment tools->full on photoshop-esqe editing. You also get a tethered mode and the ability to import form a video which are neat options. When starting to process a large batch import is easy and straightforward allowing you to both import a folder or individual images and in each case gives you an in-app window for immediately applying presets and weeding out a few imports. Lastly the nag screen to buy add-ons every time you start the app needs to go. Cyberlink needs to improve their testing a little bit.
There are also some bugs that that crashed it altogether nothing that makes it unusable but it has crashed on me a couple times from actions that I could almost tell where I confused it. If you play with it a while yo start to see the flow they want you to follow and where everything is placed. Not so much a problem for me but the interface feels a little busy and clunky. It could use some polish but it gives me the tools I need to quickly process my photos while having that little extra oomph for more complicated changes.Ĭomplaints first: I wouldn't call this beginner friendly. Fortunately Cyberlink has come along and crammed a good portion of the functionality I want together into one tool. I use Lightroom all the time but I refuse to pay for a monthly/yearly subscription for software so I haven't upgraded in years and that means Photoshop is out of the question too.