OnOne Software's Perfect Effects 8 available for free. It gives you hundreds of creative presets, fully customizable filters and ability to combine effects. Perfect Effects 8 works as a standalone application (Windows or Mac) or integrates with Adobe Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop. Go to the onOne Software site to get this fully licensed version - worth $99.95 - for free (a the time of writing). Has created various editing programs over the years including their successful Photo RAW software, ON1 Effects, and ON1 Resize (read our ON1 Resize review). In this ON1 Photo RAW 2019 review, we take an in-depth look at the latest version of their flagship product. Nov 10, 2017 Fstoppers Reviews ON1 Photo RAW 2018. Photo RAW 2018 promises to be the strongest iteration of the software to date. In this review, we. OnOne Perfect Resize Software Review Have you ever had a photo that you’d like to blow up to a huge size, but when you tried to do it looked just awful? You’re not alone, lots of people find image resolution to be an impassable barrier when it comes to printing, and it can be. Expert news, reviews and videos of the latest digital cameras, lenses, accessories, and phones. Get answers to your questions in our photography forums. Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Sign up for our weekly newsletter! Submit a News Tip! Product Database onOne onOne Software.
Have you ever had a photo that you’d like to blow up to a huge size, but when you tried to do it looked just awful? You’re not alone, lots of people find image resolution to be an impassable barrier when it comes to printing, and it can be. That doesn’t mean it has to be like this, there is a solution! Perfect Resize from On1 software.
Resize is now also available as part of On1’s image editing software, Photo RAW. Check out my extensive review of Photo RAW!
The Industry Standard
Some products stand out from the crowd and become the measuring stick of all competitors. For example in digital photography, no one has come close to Adobe Photoshop, and it would almost seem futile to attempt to compete with such a great piece of software. Other brand names that have become synonymous with their product are Band-Aid, Kleenex, Aspirin, Jacuzzi, and Scotch Tape. Well, I’m thinking we have another one here with Perfect Resize (formerly known as Genuine Fractals). Genuine Fractals has been the industry standard for many years now, in helping photographers create poster-sized prints and even billboard-sized images. Read on to see how this is done, and remember, this is not a product just for pros, it’s easy to use and will help pro and amateur photographers alike.
No product is perfect and yet this is one piece of software that comes pretty darn close to being perfect (in my opinion). No, you can’t take a small jpg image and blow it up to mural size with Perfect Resize, but you can do some incredible image interpolation with minimal side effects. Trying to do this in Photoshop will lead to a loss of sharpness and detail, resulting in prints that look out of focus and dull. Who wants that??
While many of today’s point and shoot cameras are in the 10-12 megapixel range and the pro DSLRs can get up to 23 megapixels, we still need to interpolate our photos to print them at the large poster sizes that we would like. This is where Perfect Resize comes in. With Perfect Resize you can blow up your images up to 10 times their original size and your images still look fantastic. For example, you can take a 12 mp image and resize it up to 6 feet (182 cm) on the short side!
Let’s take a look at some of the cool features in Perfect Resize
For this first example, I’ll use a photograph with a lot of intricate detail. This is a photo of the interior of the Cathédrale Saint-Louis des Invalides in Paris.
Perfect Resize Interface
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The Perfect Resize Tools
In this first set of tools, I’ll be concentrating on Document Size. Here is where you decide on your final image size. You can enter all the fields manually, or choose from one of the dozens of presets as shown in the photo below.
Tools-1a
The controls are intuitive and I found it very easy to navigate within the Perfect Resize interface. As you see, Document Size is rather self-explanatory, so let’s dig in a little further to see some of the other features.
If you go back to the Tools-1 image, you’ll notice the Navigator at the top. It’s much like the one in Photoshop, however, this navigator allows you to the image at 1:1 scale giving you a great preview of what the final output will look like. I’ll show some impressive examples later in the review. Within the Navigator, use Fit to do your cropping or if you’re using a standard preset. Fit is also used for when you are printing on canvas with a gallery wrap, and this is another cool feature of Perfect Resize that I’ll get into a bit later on as well.
Make sure that you set the proper resolution for your printer under Resolution. If you’re not sure what to set it at for printing, check the instructional manual of your printer, and if you’re using a commercial printer to send your files to, ask them what resolution they print at before you go any further. Typically Epson printers are set to 240 or 360 PPI, Canon at 300 PPI. Commercial printers vary, but typically it is also 300 PPI.
The Texture Control tool allows you to adjust the detail within different areas of a photograph. To use the Texture Control, you can either use the sliders or in most cases use one of the presets that you see in the Tools-2a image.
Tools-2a
You’ll want to view the results of the Texture Control and Sharpening at the 1:1 setting to really see the results. Take your time to play with the settings until you get the desired effect. I find that I’m usually fine with one of the presets.
I rarely use the Sharpening in Perfect Resize, because of my Photoshop workflow. I typically sharpen my images near the end of my retouching and therefore don’t need to sharpen anymore in Perfect Resize. You might want to test this out for yourself to see what works best for your photos. Sharpening images is a vital step in working on your digital images, and without sharpening your photos you’ll risk having your final output look dull or soft.
Let’s now take a look at the difference between the detail in a output of a 21 mp file that has been resized to a 48 X 32 inch size (14,400 px X 9,600 px) from the original 18.72 X 12.48 inch size (5,616 px X 3,744 px). That’s equal to an increase in size of 256 percent.
I’ll begin with the Photoshop version:
Perfect Resize vs Photoshop
Hmmm, looks a bit fuzzy now doesn’t it? While I’m a huge fan of Photoshop and I love it as a whole, there are some things that it does not do so well. Increasing image size is one of those things that it does not do very well.
Perfect Resize
Now this is more like it! The edges are crisp, the image is clear and devoid of that blurry look that I got when using Photoshop.
The next tool is Film Grain, and this one is best suited to black and white images. The Film Grain tool allows you to give your image that “pushed film” look that we used to get when shooting film and pushing the development times to achieve higher contrast and grain. Since the images I work with are typically HDR images, I’m not looking to add grain, so I don’t use this option. Try it out on more monochromatic images or your black and white photos, it’s a fun option to add the grain but don’t add too much! I’d say don’t pass the 60/100 mark and you’ll typically be ok.
Tiling your images
Tiling is a great feature in Perfect Resize that allows you to make mural-sized images even on a small printer. It does this by breaking up the image into smaller sized prints that your home printer is able to output, thus allowing you to “tile” the larger sized print much like a mosaic. In the image below, you’ll see some cyan lines dividing the image into sections that a small printer can handle, in this case, 8 x 10 inches. I blew this image of the Snow Covered Rooftops in Florence up by 700 percent.
Come to think of it, this giant print would look great on my wall ;)
Perfect Resize Tiling
Once you apply the Tiling feature, Perfect Resize will save one big file, and then break down the image into as many tiles as you see on the screen. In this case it’s 153 tiles all printed at 8″ x 10″. The files are all numbered in sequence, beginning in the upper left hand corner, making it a breeze to position them later.
This is a robust program, and it’s not just able to resize images as you can well see. The next and final tool that I’ll cover here is the Gallery Wrap tool. If you’re like me and so many other photographers today, you’re getting some of your photographs printed on canvas. Printing on canvas is a great option and when these prints are gallery wrapped, it ends up being less expensive than printing on paper and framing.
Gallery Wrapping Canvas Prints
One of the negatives of printing on canvas with a gallery wrap is that you have to sacrifice the edges of your image to stretch or wrap around the inner wood stretcher bars. With Perfect Resize’s Reflect option, you no longer have to worry about this. In the image above you’ll notice the cyan lines once again. This time they represent the edge of the image where the wrapping will begin. As you can see, I selected the Reflect option, and this mirrored the set amount of space inside the image that will be wrapped. In this case, I chose 1.5 inches, and the image below shows you a clear example of the final Gallery Wrap-effect with the Reflect option selected. This way, no image area is sacrificed and you can show off your prints with the intended cropping.
Perfect Resize Gallery Wrap Effect
Summary
Perfect Resize is the perfect name for this software. I admit that I’m a fan of OnOne’s other plugins, and either by itself or as part of the OnOne Perfect Photo Suite, Perfect Resize is a tool that I would highly recommend to both amateur and pro shooters alike. If you’re looking to print large photos and have them look their best, this is the right tool for you.
Perfect Resize works with:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Photoshop Elements
- Adobe Lightroom
- Apple Aperture
- As a stand-alone program
What Perfect Resize can do for the Photographer
- Increase image size substantially without loss of sharpness or detail that would occur by doing it in Photoshop
- Resize and crop images all in one step
- Create a mirrored gallery wrap effect for printing canvas prints
- Tile images from a larger file to print on a smaller printer, allowing you to assemble them afterward to recreate a huge print
- Control texture and grain in your enlargements
- Save presets of favourite settings for future use on similar images
- Batch processing
Final Images
In parting, I’ll leave you with these examples of what Perfect Resize is capable of. I’ll enlarge several images and compare the details at 1:1 from the original file and the resized final photos.
Increasing the size by 500%
Original Image detail – Viewed at 1:1
Image detail enlarged 500% with Perfect Resize – Viewed at 1:1
Image detail enlarged 500% with Photoshop – Viewed at 1:1
Turning a 12″ x 18″ photo into a 67″ x 100″ photo!
Detail of 12″ x 18″ photo viewed at 1:1
Detail of 67″ x 100″ photo viewed at 1:1 using Perfect Resize
Detail of 67″ x 100″ photo viewed at 1:1 using Photoshop
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On1 Photo 10
For about a decade, On1’s photo editing tools have been marketed and used primarily as plug-ins for Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, or Adobe Photoshop. Each tool was an independent, one-trick pony and appropriately named: Perfect Black and White, for example, or Perfect Portrait. A couple of versions back, On1 began rolling these mini-apps into a Perfect Photo Suite that allowed users to access all the tools from a central dashboard independent of Lightroom or Aperture. The latest version—renamed On1 Photo 10—takes this plan to the next level. Photo 10 is no longer a suite in name or design: It’s now a pretty well integrated app.
Yes, you can still use it as an adjunct for Lightroom or Photoshop; if you do, you will welcome Photo 10’s improved speed and cooperation among the modules. But for at least some photographers willing to “think different,” the big news with this release is that On1 Photo 10 is ready to stand on its own as an alternative to both Lightroom and Photoshop.
New name, new look
The elements of the former suite have been rearranged in Photo 10 for a cleaner, more efficient workflow. Perfect Black & White has been rolled into the Enhance module. The features that used to be found in Perfect Resize have been reassigned: resizing is now in a vastly improved export pane, and cropping is now found in the editing modules. And the various modules are no longer accessed via titles at the top of the window, but instead, via buttons in a bumper on the right side of the screen.
At the heart of Photo 10 are three editing modules—Enhance, Effects, and Portrait—and a kind of sub-editing fourth module for creating and managing layers.
Like Lightroom or OS X Photos, On1 Photo 10’s Enhance module can read raw files and perform basic adjustments, corrections, and enhancements to aspects of the image such as exposure, contrast, color, noise and sharpness, and spot removal.
While Photo 10’s Enhance module is deliberately straightforward, its Effects module is rich in possibilities. You’ll get a quick start on your images by selecting a preset from the drawer on the left, which is organized by different types of shooting (e.g., Architecture, Weddings, Landscapes, Sports) and different styles (e.g., Black and White, Cinematic, Hipster, Urban). But Photo 10 isn’t just a library of Instagram-style canned looks that you can slap on your images. You can edit all the presets and/or build your own sophisticated renderings by selecting and stacking the filters that are the components of presets (e.g., Antique, Blur, Black & White, Dynamic Contrast, Sunshine, etc.); and every filter can be masked and/or blended as you like.
The third editing module, Portrait, provides specialized tools for editing the elements of a face discretely. For example, you can enhance detail in eyes without exacerbating wrinkles, or you can soften skin and remove blemishes without needing to make a careful mask that excludes eyes and mouth. It’s a useful module, as far as it goes. For more aggressive edits like adding makeup, relighting or reshaping faces, you’ll need Photoshop or a dedicated app like Anthropics’ PortraitPro.
Finally, there’s that special fourth module: Layers. This is where Photo 10 goes beyond Lightroom and invites comparison to Photoshop. Even within a single layer you can get layer-like effects by stacking filters and by using masks and blending. The layers module has many uses, including compositing.
Edits made to raw files by On1 Photo 10 are always saved from the start in a separate file (JPEG, TIFF, or PSD). By comparison, many other apps, including Lightroom, save edits internally. The latter approach creates fewer files in your project folders; but it also means that Lightroom pretty much owns your edited files until you export them. If you work entirely in Adobe’s ecosystem and plan on doing so in the future, this works fine. But I have always worked in a variety of editors and I don’t really trust any of them (remember Aperture?). For me, keeping my edited files independent of any one app is a big plus.
Most of my editing in Photo 10 is done in PSD files, which support layers. Photo 10 has an optional “smart” PSD file format that makes it possible to reopen a file later in Photo 10 and make revisions.
Workflow complete
In addition to making things more efficient in the middle of your workflow—that is, where you do your editing—Photo 10 also provides improvements at the beginning and the end of the processing chain, so that Photo 10 can now handle a raw workflow from start to finish.
Onone Software Tutorials
At the start, Photo 10 eliminates the need to import files. Since it doesn’t store your edits in a proprietary database, you copy images from your camera to your computer’s storage any way you like, then just click on a folder of images in Photo 10’s Browse module. The Browse module in Photo 10 renders images quickly on my new mid-level MacBook Pro, and I can quickly rate, keyword, label, and/or caption a large folder of images. Basic finds on these user-entered types of metadata are easy. Other finds—say, by camera, focal length, or file type—can be done using the new Smart Albums feature.
At the end of your workflow, Photo 10 can export to multiple file formats, resize files (making them bigger as well as smaller), add a watermark, even add effects from editing presets (say, batching converting images to black and white). The new sharing feature hooks into OS X to upload images to Flickr or Facebook, send to Photos or Messages, or share via AirDrop. And I’m especially fond of On1’s PhotoVia feature, which syncs selected images with my iPhone and iPad via Dropbox or iCloud. Setting up PhotoVia took me about a minute and before long I had a selection of recent favorites on my iOS devices. I tried to achieve the same result with Adobe Creative Cloud and Lightroom Mobile but gave up after half an hour.
What’s not to like?
Perfect Resize Review
On1 Photo 10 doesn’t do everything. No pano stitching. No tools for advanced lens corrections or perspectival correction. No support for movie files.
And Photo 10 needs some polishing. Occasionally, it misbehaved in ways that suggest there are still bugs to be squashed. Also annoying are rough edges in the user interface and user experience. For example, there’s no way to view an image full screen. When I close a file in the Layers module, I expect to return to Browse, but I don’t; and while there are keyboard shortcuts for nearly everything else, astonishingly there is as yet no keyboard shortcut for switching to Browse. Photo 10’s unique smart photo PSD files are clever and useful but can’t be cropped. I’ve been told by the folks at On1 that some of these foibles will be fixed in coming updates.
Bottom line
No other single app in active development for Mac OS X provides the range of features found in On1 Photo 10: competent file management tools, outstanding editing tools including support for compositing in layers; and support for just about every export and sharing option you can think of, including, in On1’s PhotoVia, a drop-dead easy way to get your masterpieces over to your iPhone or iPad.
With so much to offer—and with so much competition—On1 Photo 10 will appeal to different photographers for different reasons. Even if you’re a Photoshop virtuoso, you may be interested in On1 Photo 10 for the creative presets in the Effects module. If you are already happy with another app as your primary photo management and processing tool (say, Lightroom, or even OS X Photos), you should check out Photo 10’s easy implementation of layers. But remember, On1 Photo 10 is now a complete raw workflow app that can stand on its own. Bummed that Apple killed off Aperture? Not enthusiastic about Adobe’s new subscription plan for its apps? Feel that Lightroom isn’t enough, but Photoshop is too much? Then you should give Photo 10 a serious look. On1 provides a 60-day free trial, so you have plenty of time to try before you buy.
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On1 Photo 10