Serif's PhotoPlus X5 can't decide whether it wants to be your Photoshop or your Photoshop Elements (or Corel PaintShop Pro, for that matter). The product offers some powerful and complex image enhancement tools like the former, but an organizer app and lots of guidance like the former, which it's also closer to in price, at $89.99. The problem is that PhotoPlus can't match the Adobe products in either domain. While this latest version adds some catch-up features like a "vibrance" enhancement and a little more in the way of organizational tools, it still feels dated, and still trails Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 ($99.99, 4 stars, EC) and Corel PaintShop Pro X4 ($79.99, 3.5 stars).
Interface
Like Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, PhotoPlus uses two separate applications to handle the organizing and editing functions?the Organizer and the full PhotoPlus edit. And it takes this segmentation a few steps further, with separate app windows for "PhotoFix" (see below), photo projects, and more. I do like the Organizer's simple left sidebar, which can switch between showing dates, folders, tags, and ratings or the selected photo's metadata. Along the top are buttons that take you to the full editor or to a PhotoFix simple photo improver as well as rotation, sharing, and view options.
As I found with Photoshop Elements 10, PhotoPlus couldn't enlarge an image to larger than the window for a closer look in Organizer. Another quibble is that when you click the button to launch a picture into the full editor, the latter's window doesn't open automatically if you've already opened it, as Photoshop Elements' does. Better still would be an integrated organizer/editor like Corel PaintShop Pro X4's.
The full PhotoPlus editor interface, though slightly improved, is still cluttered, with its three rows of menus and toolbars on top, button bar and panel on the sides, and photo tray on the bottom. Granted, you can turn off the panels, but the interface still looks dated, even down to its light gray background, which modern photo editors have replaced with a nearly black interface to let the photos shine.
PhotoPlus is noticeably slower than Photoshop Elements 10 or Corel PaintShop Pro X4, whether in performing an adjustment or effect or just in displaying a high megapixel image at full resolution.? Some common controls are missing from easily accessible view: There's no zoom slider or revert buttons, though these are available in menus, both are more conveniently handled in competing programs.
Importing and Organizing Photos
The PhotoPlus X5 installation process doesn't add an import option to Windows' AutoPlay dialog that pops up when you plug camera media into a PC as most photo software does, but a highly visible Import button at top left of the app's toolbar makes it clear how to get started. PhotoPlus's Organizer had no trouble importing from a DSLR, but ARW and CR2 raw image previews didn't show up in the importer. They were later visible in the Organizer, however.? And the importer wouldn't find images on an iPhone 4S, though Google Picasa on the same system had no trouble doing so.? PhotoPlus does let you tag on import and choose filename sequences, but so do the others.
The simple Organizer interface let me do the standard star ratings, tagging, rotating, and stacking. The last, which lets you stack similar photos, is new for this version, but it doesn't automatically group images as competitors do, and the resulting stacked images don't look much like an actual stack, as they do in other apps. I could also create smart albums based on date range, size, and tags. In a surprising plus, a Google Maps mashup built into the program let me geo-tag photos and show their location on a map, and even correctly found iPhone photos' location based on GPS data embedded in the image files. But alas, there's no face recognition, the must-have organization tool of state-of-the art consumer photo editing software.
When you import raw camera files, PhotoPlus takes much longer than competitors like Photoshop Elements 10 or Corel PaintShop X4 to resolve the photo on screen to its full resolution--you just see a highly pixelated version for several seconds first. Before you open camera raw images in the PhotoPlus editor, you stop at the Raw Studio window, where you can adjust white balance, exposure and black point, as well as reducing image noise and chromatic aberration. Split views let you see before and after for these operations, which actually exceed what you can do in PhotoShop Elements 10. But on one test in importing Canon CR2 raw files, the result in the editor was poor quality, noisy images?worse than appeared in the organizer?and that was without changing anything in the Raw Studio.
Basic Photo Editing and Corrections
Before you even get to the full editor app, you can get to work on an image in the PhotoFix windows, accessible from a clear button atop the Organizer's window.? But this tool?and PhotoPlus as a whole?lacks the simplest photo corrector of all: Auto fix. I can't remember reviewing a photo app that didn't include this type of best-guess button; perhaps Serif doesn't think these worthwhile, but even pro tools like Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture include Auto-tone, which often gets you a good ways towards optimizing an image.
PhotoFix does offer presets to change lighting and color ("Intense, Warmer), and offers fixes like cropping, red-eye correction, blemish removal. But it also offers advanced stuff like curves, HSL, lens distortion. Though Serif claims that PhotoPlus is a non-destructive editor, meaning your changes don't overwrite the originals, I didn't find this to be the case unless I specifically used layers in the advanced editor interface.? Changes I made were saved to the original file: The competitors create a new file type when you save edits and create a database file of just the changes you make, so that you can always return to the original image data.
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