Serif
PhotoPlus X2 has a truck load of features and some
excellent step by step tutorials. For between £50 -
£60 (depending on where you shop) it represents
tremendous value for money and can introduce the
novice to some easy to use powerful tools as well
as a quantity of more professional effects. Upload
some people pics and give them the works. With just
a few clicks of the mouse the ‘Make-Over Studio’,
which opens automatically to the left of your
screen with a new or saved document will eliminate
bad skin, dodgy teeth, baggy eyes, double chins,
nasty blemishes as well as adding a fake tan and a
slimmed down body, you name it, the Serif
Make-up Studio will enhance it. Of course many of
these features are available in other programs but
Serif’s make-over studio makes the process much
more simple, in fact, if you know what you
want to do but are just too lazy to do it
(surely not !) then you can just click on the
very handy ‘do it for me’ tab and hey presto it’s
done for you. Twenty minutes in the Serif Make-over
Studio and your pictures will have celebrity appeal
and poised for an appearance in Hello Magazine.
Along the top of the page are some really cool tools. ‘Quick Fix Studio’ will sort out the entire red eye, lens distortion, cropping, sharpen and all the normal photo corrections. The ‘Filter Gallery’ tab will allow further distortion, noise, blur, sharpen, edge, render plus, clicking on the ‘other’ tab brings you more choices one of which is comic book. This was my favourite. By loading a variety of photographs and displaying them as a story board you could then add the comic book filter which flattens the colour giving a real cartoon appearance then place some speech bubbles and Whoosh!!! you have your own comic strip.
Next to the Filter Gallery tab is the ‘Instant Artist’ tab. This may turn your photograph into an instant Van Gogh or give it an impressionist or old master style. This could even help you to become your own artist. By clicking on the ‘paint and ink’ tab, turn the ink level to heavy, the paint detail to detailed and a brush size of small to medium. Print this out then go over the strokes in the same colours painting over with more or less the same brush strokes and there you have your own painting and know one will know that beneath your work of art is a computer template. Hmm I might try that myself.
The ‘Extract Tool’ alongside the instant artist tool makes life a lot easier when you want to select only part of an image. For example when isolating a person from a group shot the extract tab allows you to draw around the subject, fill the section to be extracted then hit the extract tab to lift your selection onto a separate layer.
There are plenty of layer facilities, adjustment layers, layer masks, filter layers plus many of the tools you would normally only see in a high-end graphics program.
Photoplus X2 includes professional looking animation features plus the facility to import, edit and export animated gifs as well as the option to clone multiple frames and flatten frames for complete non-stop flexibility
Along with X2 you are given the choice of loading AlbumPlus SE Pro, a program that allows you to organize and share you images as well as creating slideshows, photo discs and ordering prints online.
There are three groups of image editing programs, under £40, £50 - £100 then the high-end professional group being well over a £100. At between £50 - £60, the official price of X2 being £59.99 Serif is by far one of the best in it’s group. It’s easy to use, contains very well documented tutorials and although not the cheapest it will take the home user/novice quite a long time to outgrow the tools and facilities that Serif X2 delivers.
Along the top of the page are some really cool tools. ‘Quick Fix Studio’ will sort out the entire red eye, lens distortion, cropping, sharpen and all the normal photo corrections. The ‘Filter Gallery’ tab will allow further distortion, noise, blur, sharpen, edge, render plus, clicking on the ‘other’ tab brings you more choices one of which is comic book. This was my favourite. By loading a variety of photographs and displaying them as a story board you could then add the comic book filter which flattens the colour giving a real cartoon appearance then place some speech bubbles and Whoosh!!! you have your own comic strip.
Next to the Filter Gallery tab is the ‘Instant Artist’ tab. This may turn your photograph into an instant Van Gogh or give it an impressionist or old master style. This could even help you to become your own artist. By clicking on the ‘paint and ink’ tab, turn the ink level to heavy, the paint detail to detailed and a brush size of small to medium. Print this out then go over the strokes in the same colours painting over with more or less the same brush strokes and there you have your own painting and know one will know that beneath your work of art is a computer template. Hmm I might try that myself.
The ‘Extract Tool’ alongside the instant artist tool makes life a lot easier when you want to select only part of an image. For example when isolating a person from a group shot the extract tab allows you to draw around the subject, fill the section to be extracted then hit the extract tab to lift your selection onto a separate layer.
There are plenty of layer facilities, adjustment layers, layer masks, filter layers plus many of the tools you would normally only see in a high-end graphics program.
Photoplus X2 includes professional looking animation features plus the facility to import, edit and export animated gifs as well as the option to clone multiple frames and flatten frames for complete non-stop flexibility
Along with X2 you are given the choice of loading AlbumPlus SE Pro, a program that allows you to organize and share you images as well as creating slideshows, photo discs and ordering prints online.
There are three groups of image editing programs, under £40, £50 - £100 then the high-end professional group being well over a £100. At between £50 - £60, the official price of X2 being £59.99 Serif is by far one of the best in it’s group. It’s easy to use, contains very well documented tutorials and although not the cheapest it will take the home user/novice quite a long time to outgrow the tools and facilities that Serif X2 delivers.
Serif PhotoPlus X2 Digital Studio Review