Anthropics Technology Ltd is a London based software company doing pioneering work in digital human representation and animation. Over the past 5 years Anthropics has developed world beating technologies which have been used by major mobile telecommunications companies, including Nokia, Vodafone, Telefonica, O2, 3, and many other mobile operators. Digital Photo News has done a review of their software, Portrait Professional.
Being a Photoshop pro for many years and seeing many programs and filters that are supposed to do the same, which is retouching, I was very sceptical about this program. My scepticism grow bigger when I saw some example results on PortraitProfessional.com where they used seconds as a measurement of doing retouching done. Installation package of Portrait Professional is around 2 Megs big and installation procedure itself lasted less then a minute on my home computer. I've started programme and first screen almost made me quit programme because I thought “Oh no, another same simple and look alike programme”. But, luckily, I've continued and very quickly things started to impress me. Portrait Professional doesn’t have stylish menus and work area is pretty simple. I don’t like to see when programmes compensate their lack of possibilities with graphical “make up”. Work with this programme is quite simple in fact.
First you have to open your portrait photo and in the next step to select is it a female or a male face. Ok, this makes sense because of a difference in shape of the male and female face and in the talks with development team they said that they only recently inserted feature for man face. Next few steps were something totally new to me. In short, you have to specify some points on the face: both corners of left and right eye, nose, corners of lip, chin... Then you have to fine tune your selection. You have key points in selection and you can move them until you are satisfied. When finished program will contact server on the internet and in less then a minute you have your portrait corrected. But correction is not yet completely done because you have some options of fine tuning. First in order is face sculpting where you can change position of eyes, lips, nose, length and width of face and also shape of the face. Then there are Skin tone controls and lightning sliders but Eye and teeth whitening were the feature that brought smile on my face. So simple but so effective. First portrait took me around 4-5 minutes to complete because I was new to program but second one was quite faster, no more then a minute. I tried portraits of kids, pro models and older people. Results varied from photo to photo.
To say that this is a tool for professionals would be a lie. Sometimes I need more then 5 hours to retouch a portrait and I now that it is a hard and time consuming work. But if you are amateur or advanced amateur this program is going to make you smile. Easy to understand, almost no time consumed on learning what curves, levels, filters, are and so on, and most important, very fast. Also there is a price. Photoshop costs almost 10 times more and you have to spend many hours learning different techniques. So I would recommend this programme to people that want good results quickly.
Press release: Ground-breaking image processing firm Anthropics Technology, based at London's Ealing Studios, has today announced a new commercial version of image enhancing software for digital pictures. Anthropics has developed unique image processing capability which enables unskilled users to achieve pro quality touchup in just 2-3 minutes that would otherwise only be possible in 1-2 hours for a skilled artist using Photoshop. This is now offered as a flexible and cost-effective package called "Portrait Professional(tm)" to the world's booming digital photography market. For those in the photographic industry this is a complementary tool that can reduce retouching time by upwards of 80% per image, and for the keen amateur this is a package that can create results previously unattainable without becoming a highly adept Photoshop user. The software is available to download at Anthropics' sister website www.portraitprofessional.com following the completion of recent beta trials, and is priced at £39.99. Users can take advantage of a free trial to road-test the software before deciding whether to purchase. Unique features available include automated correction of lighting, blemishes and the signs of aging, and special "sculpting" options to subtly enhance facial shape and features. The technology behind this new product is a unique image processing system that has been "trained" in the psychological and physiognomical characteristics of male and female beauty, such that it can rapidly transform unflattering or poorly shot pictures into highly attractive, "caught on your best day" results in just a couple of minutes. This is the single most advanced product in its field, and the only commercial software in the world with this level of human image intelligence. Anthropics' CEO Andrew Berend said: "The number of portrait shots taken daily by keen photo enthusiasts and the professional market is virtually incalculable. The majority of these require some editing to reduce the glare and shine caused by sub-optimal lighting conditions, or to perform a degree of skilled retouching to even out skin tone and give a youthful, healthy look. Subtle structural enhancements which have been performed for years by pro retouchers have until now been all but inaccessible to the enthusiast. We have changed all of this and set a new benchmark for workflow reduction and ease of enhancement." Once again the breadth of market benefit provided by Anthropics' unique image-enhancement technology is impressive - from enthusiastic amateurs who'd like to achieve professional results, wedding photographers looking to make the bride appear just that little bit more glamorous and youthful, through to high fashion's cover-girl airbrush gurus, this tool is set to become the de facto fast-editing suite for amateur and pro alike. Software available now for download (free trial use) at www.portraitprofessional.com
Anthropics Technology Ltd is a London based software company doing pioneering work in digital human representation and animation. Over the past 5 years Anthropics has developed world beating technologies which have been used by major mobile telecommunications companies, including Nokia, Vodafone, Telefonica, O2, 3, and many other mobile operators. Digital Photo News has done a review of their software, Portrait Professional.
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