Portrait Professional

It's been a while since I've seen an Ad for Portrait Professional. Portrait Professional is a editing software program if you haven't guessed, for portraits. It is supposed to speed up the editing of portraits with a comprehensive set of Preset edits. Some of these edits include softening of the skin, removing blemishes, removing double-chins, widening the eyes(for females) even slimming down the subject. I downloaded a version years ago, but I never learned how to master it much less use it. Maybe, because I don't shoot that many portraits except on the job.

 

It came up when I was trying to clean-up my computer by removing seldom used software. If I remember correctly, Portrait Professional actually made my portraits look worse than what I started with. Instead of quick and easy edits I spent more time trying to revert the edits I had made ! Also the "presets" did not work universally, for every subject you had to go in there and tweak the parameters a little bit. Some of my subjects actually winded up looking ghoulish and scary !

 

Of course it could be I didn't spend enough time trying to learn how to use it. I wonder if there are any Professional Portrait Photographers out there, that use this software on a daily basis ?

Since I always liked the "before" pictures better than the "after" ones in the ads that I saw for this software, I never tried it. It always looked to me like the overly retouched school portraits from the 1950's where every high school senior had perfect skin, teeth and hair. I'm sure that some photographers shooting hundreds of school portraits a day probably benefited from this, but I'm not surprised that you didn't like it or use it.

I also got it years ago, and for the same reasons as AJG, I found I didn't find it useful. I haven't used it in years.

I have it on my shopping list, recalling our (back then?) moderator Spearhead being fond of it. I neither own a quite decent computer, nor am I shooting suitable subjects.

If "Instagram persona, female style" was the desired output, I 'd try Portrait Pro.

To give the software a second chance, maybe watch some YouTube tutorials about it?

It works well in a Vogue Cover kind of way. I'm sure some people would like the results - same as some people pay a load of cash to have a makeover and come out looking like a codfish that's been clubbed in the mouth and stuffed and mounted!

 

Two hours in makeup isn't an unusual length of time for some young people!

 

The time-consuming part of Portrait Professional is outlining (wire-framing) the face, hairline and eyes and eyebrows. And as long as you don't dial the effects up to 11 the result can be quite pleasant.

 

Weirdly, the person stays totally recognisable, even if the shape of their face is 'idealised' to an extreme degree.

 

So, yes, if I was in the business of selling overtly flattering portraits to a fairly unsophisticated customer-base, then Portrait Professional would almost certainly be in my armoury.

Robert Burns notwithstanding, we are blessed to not see our face as others see it. Portrait Pro extends that blessing to photographs.

 

Portrait Pro can be configured to re-model facial features, or simply remove blemishes. The latter can be very useful for teenagers going through the pimply stage of life. It proved worthwhile when I would shoot large numbers of participants in various music contests. I wanted the kids to look nice, without spending a ton of time on the project.

 

As the one usually with the camera, I seldom see my other side. My daughter-in-law volunteered to take a family picture, in which I saw a caricature of an old guy I barely recognized. A quick pass before a mirror assured me that someone else had stood in my place.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Ed_Ingold

I agree with most of the above. I preferred Portraiture by Imagenomic. (Am I remembering this correctly?)

I haven't used Portrait Pro in some time now, but it saved me a lot of money and inconvenience a few days ago. We had a family get together for a birthday lunch, and took a few snapshots afterwards. I'm pretty sure Portrait Pro saved me the cost of surgery, or a divorce.