Serif PhotoPlus X3
by Serif
List Price:
Our Price: $14.99
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Category: Software
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Software Summary
Manufacturer: SerifBrand: Serif
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: DVD-ROM
Release Date: 2009-05-29
Platform: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP
Model: PHPX3USMBRT
Product features:
- Fix common photo flaws quickly - straighten horizons, adjust color saturation, correct lens distortion, and more.
- Bring photos back to life! Remove damage and recover texture to undo years of fading.
- Turn photos into art instantly! Mimic styles like Impressionist, Van Gogh, Oil, Pencil, and Watercolor.
- Open 24 different image types including JPG, PNG, TIFF, and Adobe® Photoshop® files with layers!
- Process and adjust Raw images straight from your digital camera and export as 48-bit images.
Software Reviews of Serif PhotoPlus X3
Customer Review: A photo editor with a great feature set
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I do a lot of digital photography as well as digital scrapbooking, web graphics, virtual painting and other tasks that require a strong photo editor. I have used products ranging from Paintshop Pro (many versions) to Corel Paint, GIMP, and of course Photoshop. I've also used digital management software with built-in photo tools such as Picasa, Lightroom and ACDSee Pro. I was not familiar with Serif and PhotoPlus so was excited to get a copy to review and compare to some of these other tools.
First, many other reviewers have mentioned the horrendous registration process, and I have to concur. I *hate* having to pick up a phone just to be able to use the software, and even more hated the forced registration and refused to provide some of the information they wanted. Even after I told the customer service rep that I did not need a sales pitch on other products and that my copy was a free one provided for review, he still continued to tell me about their "great" 30 day return policy (not something that applied to me) and other great products they offer. Horrendous and for this reason alone I could not give the product 5 stars, and considering dropping it to 3 for the total lack of respect for their customers shown by forcing you to listen to a sales pitch just for buying their product. The rep talked about their company wanting to expand more in the US....this is NOT the way to go about it.
So, that out of the way, let's talk about the product. Coming from Photoshop, I was pretty comfortable with the interface. If you have never used a good photo editor before, you may be a bit overwhelmed, but a nice printed manual was included (a rarity these days) and the software includes decent context-sensitive help. I was pleasantly surprised by how many features this software has! I had to go back and check the selling price again because it's hard to believe software this good can be purchased for less than $80. First, it's got a strong set of tools that pros or graphic professionals would want. It has image RAW handling, adjustment layers with all the usual stuff, masks and channels, arrange and align tools, dodge/burn/smudge/blur/sponge tools, color replacer, etc. There's also lots of stuff less experienced users will really appreciate. The Quick Fix Studio makes it easy to do all your typical photo editing in one place, and the help tab in the software has click links to all the common issues, including a complete section on doing photo cleanup, everything from whitening teeth to faking a suntan. And there's lots of tools for image cleanup and repair included. The typical Red Eye brush (which is as underwhelming as most of them are), spot and scratch removers, patch tool, clone, etc.
There's lots of presets and little extras touches in this software that I kept saying "wow" to see included. The number of brushes included is quite impressive and it's nice to see macros built in for some things like a simple photo frame and mat. There's plenty of selection effects and other filters, all the stuff you'd want to have (like bevel/emboss, drop/inner shadows, glows, textures, etc.) You'll find a good filter gallery that shows a preview of the effect and lets you easily try different filters on your image. There's even an "instant effects" panel to let you apply a wide number of preset effects to a selection....basically the same as styles in Photoshop. You can create your own macros (like actions in Photoshop) and instant effects (layer styles) and even save your workspace settings, if like me you like to customize placements of tabs and palettes. I also loved the palette at the bottom showing you thumbnails of open images to quickly toggle among them.
Not everything is perfect of course. You're still not going to find a lot of advanced Photoshop features (Smart Objects for instance) and there are a lot of places where you are pretty much restricted to what comes built-in. For instance, while I can create custom styles or brushes, there doesn't seem to be any way to import ones that other people create. This seems to be across-the-board, things like textures, gradients, custom shapes don't appear to even have any in-product creation ability at all, let alone importing them. The only exception to this is the ability to import PaintShop Pro picture tubes, an odd choice for the sole one to include. This is a big feature to be missing, one reason that Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are so popular are the community resources you have with them...not just for training, but to get all kinds of addons for the product. That's a bit of an issue for me with it, it should at a minimum allow users of the product to share such items with each other.
Several times when I exported to jpegs, the software did not seem to save them properly and they would not open in other applications. I had to return to the software and export again. Also, there are no image upload functions for popular online sites like Flickr, Picasa, etc. The album software included is barely adequate but does let you view and do quick edits, tagging, etc. on your images.
There are a variety of other things that I just found annoying. For instance, when you are viewing the Color selector, there's no way to click on your image to select a color. This isn't a big deal if you want to paint with a color from the image, but if for instance, I am in the Effects panel and want to use a color from my image for an effect, I have to select it and add it to my custom colors *before* going into the effects settings. It's somewhat annoying if you are coming from another editor how it seems to purposely use different names for things. There's also an underwhelming number of keyboard shortcuts available. I couldn't find any keyboard method to resize brushes, which more than any is the one that annoys and slows me down.
The main problem with the software is it's not the most consumer-friendly. Even coming from Photoshop where I am used to an overwhelming number of buttons, menus and context menus, I got lost at times trying to figure out where things are and how to do even some basic tasks. There's not as much coherency to this program as say, Photoshop Elements, and there is more that you have to learn to do on your own. If you like just having buttons to click to do everything automatically, you won't find it here. It's got potential but there's some work to do to really make this more consumer-friendly. If you are not real computer-savvy and are easily overwhelmed when learning new software, this might not be the best choice for you. If you don't mind digging a bit and having to do more stuff manually, this is definitely software to check out, because there is really a lot of you can do with it. This would also be a fairly decent program for someone wanting to eventually move up to a package like Photoshop, as there is a lot here that is quite similar.
The software can handle an excellent number of formats, although I did not find it would necessarily handle them well. My Photoshop images for instance, did not import text layers as text, and colors in layer styles did not always come through correctly. I was impressed that it included HDR merge for combining photos at different exposures, as well as up to 42-bit images. Both great for digital photographers. It also includes web-based features, such as image maps and slices, as well as the ability to do animations. The package I received also included panorama software, I've not had a chance to try it yet, and would prefer to see this built-in rather than as a separate program.
Overall, a very nice package for the price and well worth considering.
Description of Serif PhotoPlus X3
PhotoPlus X3 Digital Studio is Serif?s professional digital image editing solution. PhotoPlus X3 brings you an unrivalled combination of easy-to-use photo enhancement Studios, on-screen automated help, and a rich collection of professional-level tools and adjustments. Whether you?re resizing holiday snaps, removing flaws from portraits, adjusting exposure and color levels, restoring old images, importing Photoshop documents, or transforming photos with unique effects and artistic styles, PhotoPlus X3 Digital Studio has everything you need to achieve the highest quality results - fast.Photo Editing Software
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