Software today has giving photographers the ability to do with the click of a button what makeup artists spend years learning and practicing. Many software products can do things a makeup artist can only dream about, making the eyes bigger and clearer, slimming cheek bones, and making changes to the subject’s facial structure.
Even today it could be argued that a professional makeup artist is hard to beat, but the software is catching up. Here are a few of the more popular products in wide use in professional shops, some of these software products are stand-alone applications, while others are plug-ins that harness the power of image manipulation programs like Photoshop, some will operate either way.
All of these products have some “issues” that prevent them from being all things to all photographers. So there’s a market to be had for any company that can come up with a better product.
I have yet to set foot in a professional studio that didn’t have a copy of this plug-in in their toolbox. It can look intimidating the first time you fire it up, but Portraiture 2 has added much more automation and has become the clear favorite for applying subtle enhancements to skin tones.
Available for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture it will set you back a cool $199.95 but, if you do a lot of portraits, it will be worth every penny. Portraiture is considered by many to be the gold standard of portrait software.
Portrait Professional comes in three different versions, available as a stand-alone product or plugin for Photoshop. Even the basic version gives you all the tools photographers seek including skin tone adjustments, fixing the mouth, hair, teeth and eyes and tools for sculpting the face shape.
It appears to be what once was Phototune SkinTune 2 has now been rolled into OnOne Software’s Perfect Portrait.
Fast, accurate selection tools, and loaded with slider controls for fine adjustments, Perfect Portrait looks poised to carry on the good name of SkinTone 2.
This is a stand-alone software product available for pre-order for $99.95.
Makeup is available as a stand alone product or plug-in and the strengths of this product are the automatic features and batch processing capabilities. You can try the full-featured version of this product free for 10 days. $49 if you decide to keep it.
I’d still maintain it’s hard to beat the talents of a professional makeup artist, but if you don’t have the money to pay one or they’re not available, software is the next best thing.