Software


Plug Into Smoother Skin with Portraiture 3

May 9, 2017

By Theano Nikitas

More effective and a whole lot faster than the most expensive skin cream, Imagenomic just released version 3 of its Portraiture plug-in. The software is currently only available for Photoshop CC, but the company promises that Portraiture 3 for Lightroom is “coming soon.”

Image © Theano Nikitas

In case you’re unfamiliar with Portraiture, it’s a plug-in with a simple interface that makes skin retouching a breeze. While there are manual controls, the presets work very well, so there’s a good chance you’ll only need to do a little tweaking. Automatic masking is quite intelligent, but an eye dropper lets you quickly add additional skin tones if needed.

Presets for smoothing and styles are also available. Of course, you can create and save custom versions and upload presets from other photographers as well. Among the presets, you’ll find various smoothing strengths and more stylized options such as Glamour, High Key and Low Key enhancements, too.

Image courtesy of Imagenomic

Most of the improvements to Portraiture are under the hood with promises of up to 5x faster performance and refined skin algorithms. While I couldn’t quantify the increased speed, the software ran smoothly and quickly on an old (mid-2012) Macbook Pro with 8GB of RAM running OS X 10.11.6. (You’ll need a minimum of OS X 10.10 or Windows 7 [64 bit] as well as Photoshop CC 2015.5/2017.) I was pretty impressed with the smoothing results, too.

The interface has been revised too, moving almost all the controls to the left of the screen. Bundling everything in one place is, of course, time-saving since you don’t have to move your cursor from one side to the other. Button-size has been increased for better visibility on 4K monitors, and there’s plenty of room to view images, too.

Portraiture 3 for Photoshop will set you back $200 (there are bundles available with other Imagenomic plug-ins) but it’s a free upgrade for Portraiture 2 owners. There’s a free trial version, too, if you want to take it for a spin.

Related Articles:

Post-Processing Power: Super Software for Stills and Motion

Hands-On With ON1 Photo RAW 2017

Software So Smooth You’ll Think You’re Dreaming