onOne Perfect Photo Suite 8 Free Beta

BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
I sat through a demo of Perfect Photo Suite 7 while at a Kelby seminar. I was already a Nik Collection user at the time and found myself comparing the two products at every turn and not necessarily paying attention to everything it does. The things that stood out to me were the Resize tool, which will apparently preserve sharpness and clarity through unheard of levels of image enlargement beyond the original size making sensor MP's almost irrelevant (i.e. you don't need a D800 to produce print the size of a wall), and the Masking tool that allows you to far more easily create masks within a Photoshop document.

They just announced the latest version, Perfect Photo Suite 8, and are allowing people to access a free Beta version that will expire at the end of November, so you've got a month to play. The suite itself retails for, I believe, $129, so it's comparable with the Nik price. I don't know that it's worth having both, but I'm downloading and playing just to see what's what. I can't imagine it'll replace the Nik Collection in my workflow, but it'll be interesting to see what it offers on top of that. Unlike Nik, this seems to be capable of operating outside of Adobe and Aperture products, though I may have read that wrong, but if it does then it could potentially serve as a standalone photo editing solution ala Lightroom. And hey, for now the price is right.

Perfect Photo Suite 8 Public Beta - onOne Software
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Oops, my mistake, it's $129 for the Lightroom/Aperture compatible version and $179 for the Photoshop version (pre-order price - after than it seems to be WAY too expensive for me to consider at $299). To make up for that I've verified that this indeed operates as a standalone application as well, so yo don't need to be tied in to any existing editing software.
 
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Marcel

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
Thanks for posting Jake,

Please keep us in touch as far as how it compares to the Nik software.
 
W

WhiteLight

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
I sat through a demo of Perfect Photo Suite 7 while at a Kelby seminar. I was already a Nik Collection user at the time and found myself comparing the two products at every turn and not necessarily paying attention to everything it does. The things that stood out to me were the Resize tool, which will apparently preserve sharpness and clarity through unheard of levels of image enlargement beyond the original size making sensor MP's almost irrelevant (i.e. you don't need a D800 to produce print the size of a wall), and the Masking tool that allows you to far more easily create masks within a Photoshop document.

They just announced the latest version, Perfect Photo Suite 8, and are allowing people to access a free Beta version that will expire at the end of November, so you've got a month to play. The suite itself retails for, I believe, $129, so it's comparable with the Nik price. I don't know that it's worth having both, but I'm downloading and playing just to see what's what. I can't imagine it'll replace the Nik Collection in my workflow, but it'll be interesting to see what it offers on top of that. Unlike Nik, this seems to be capable of operating outside of Adobe and Aperture products, though I may have read that wrong, but if it does then it could potentially serve as a standalone photo editing solution ala Lightroom. And hey, for now the price is right.

Perfect Photo Suite 8 Public Beta - onOne Software
Click to expand...

This is something worth looking out for.. I've been reading a lot of pre-release discussion and there are a lot of great things (at least on paper till someone tries it) about this suite.
Good for that photo community!

Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk
 
K

Krs_2007

Senior Member
I like it and have both Nik and this one, but I am not a power user of either one. I think its a great product and I purchased it a few months ago and received an email stating I can get a free upgrade for being a recent purchaser, so at least they take care of customers.

The tools are great, trouble free and just waiting for more time to use both. I have used the Define in current version and its great for automatic noise reduction, you can also do more tweaking if you need too. I haven't found that I need to. I did buy it for for perfect resize because of all of the reviews on it.

Check out their product videos, really nice product.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
A couple days in and my opinion so far is that I really wish I could buy a version of Perfect Mask that worked with PS for less than $99 as it would save me tons of time with things like the product shots I just did (background smoothing that took me about 5-10 minutes per photo could be done in 2 minutes or less). Perfect Enlarge seems to work extremely well, but I haven't had the opportunity to go through some old JPEGs I shot in Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park before going DSLR (i.e. no RAW files) and see how they look set up to print larger than 5x7.

As for the rest of it, with the advent of Nik's Analog Efex I see very little here that can't be done by the Nik tools. Whether you can do them "better" or "easier" is hard for me to judge since I've been entrenched in them for a year now and find them far easier to use with the Control Point methodology than the PS layer mask approach onOne has. That said, if you are used to using stacked layer masks then this might be an easier transition?

I doubt very highly that I will purchase it at the end of the trial, and absolutely certain that I will not come back to it at the $299 price tag it commands after that (though I can get it for $199 with my NAPP membership). Nice tool, particularly the masking software, but way overpriced compared to others, and Nik in particular, for the rest of it.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
So, I figured I might as well close the door on this thread. On the back end of playing with this for a month here's what I come up with in a nutshell...

Nik Complete Collection is a much better, less expensive and easier to use suite of tools for image editing than the Perfect Photo Suite Pro. Here's my reasoning.

  • Viveza 2.0 is essentially on level ground with Perfect Enhance in terms of what it does, but the control point functionality makes it much more flexible and usable.
  • I would have given an edge to Perfect Effects 8 over Color Efex Pro 4 just for the sheer number of filters, but since Nik added Analog Efex they are at least equals, and perhaps Nik is again ahead on this one. Plus there are the control points.
  • Silver Efex Pro 2 is a notch and a half above Perfect B&W as it allows much finer control of various tonalities and structure elements. Perfect B&W has more available in terms of borders and framing, and includes the ability to use a B&W version as a blending layer with the original image internal to the program instead of externally in Photoshop (I prefer to blend in PS, but it's a feature).
  • You get HDR Efex Pro 2 with Nik and don't need to spend $$ on another piece of software.
  • You get Dfine 2.0 with Nik, which may be the best noise reduction software there is.
  • The Nik interface in Photoshop is much less quirky to use than Perfect Photo, which for some reason requires combinations of single-clicks and double-clicks to invoke.
  • Oh yeah, Nik has those Control Points I've been mentioning.

Perfect Photo Suite, while paling to the Nik Collection in terms of editing, does have these things going for it...
  • Perfect Mask is probably the easiest tool I've used to create complex layer masks and remove backgrounds. It does everything you can do in Photoshop with lassos and smart selection tools, but it does it quicker and more easily, and is better at those hard spots like hair and gaps in trees, etc.
  • Perfect Portrait has some really nice tools for fixing, well, portraits. I've not used other portrait specific tools, but probably would not find the need to with this available to me.
  • Perfect Resize does a pretty darn good job at taking a high-res image and making it even bigger without losing detail or sharpness. So, if you need to go past the 13x19 image you're getting from your camera and maybe do a wall-sized print, this can get you there.
  • If you are used to using Photoshop and layer masks this will have a much quicker learning curve.
  • Perfect Photo Suite can be operated as standalone software and does not require Lightroom, Photoshop or Aperture with it - and the standalone product is only $79 (the Premium edition for LR/PS is listed at $299 but is on sale for $179, and I suspect it will remain at or near that for a while).


OK, so all that said, I decided to throw the money at Perfect Photo as well, primarily for the Mask and Portrait functionality. I downloaded this just after I delivered my first set of product shots to a customer. The time required for me to smooth out backgrounds and remove noise was about 8-15 minutes per shot for 20 shots. I went back and was able to accomplish this in well under 5 minutes per shot, and it had the added advantage of allowing me to quickly pull in a standard background layer within the app. That time savings alone will eventually pay for the tool, so the Portrait and Resize tools are gravy.

If I had to recommend only one tool I would still tell folks to buy the Nik Collection - it's more powerful, cheaper and easier to use. But I do believe there are some nice functions here if you are a big tweaker like me, or have the business need.
 
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