Adobe Lightroom — Picture Soup

Photodex Releases ProShow Web Plug-in for Adobe Lightroom

Plug-in lets Mac users create ProShow slideshows with ProShow Web service

Photodex has just released a new version of its ProShow Plug-in for Adobe Lightroom. The plug-in helps photographers quickly create video slideshows by removing all the busy-work involved with preparing photos and importing them into a show. The plug-in is completely free and supports both Mac and PC. It also supports ProShow Web, the company’s web based slideshow creation service.

Users can export images from Lightroom to ProShow Producer, Photodex’s professional slideshow creation software. Export support for ProShow Producer is PC only.

When exporting to ProShow Producer, the ProShow Plug-in for Lightroom offers additional built-in features that jumpstart show creation and make creating a slideshow easier than ever. The plug-in automatically prepares and exports photos to a folder, creates a basic show containing the photos, and opens the show in Producer. Users can set a number of parameters in the plug-in to help set up the basics of their slideshow. Options for selecting transitions, motions effects, photo borders and adding captions from metadata are all supported in the plug-in. Users can also select from presets that automatically create shows that can be fine-tuned in Producer.

The ProShow Plug-in for Lightroom is free and can be downloaded directly from the Adobe Lightroom Exchange website. The plug-in is Mac and PC compatible and works with Lightroom 2.0 or newer versions.

What is ProShow Web?

ProShow Web, is Photodex’s all-new service for creating instant video slideshows online. The service works by intelligently mixing photos, videos and music together into a unique video slideshow. Users can create free, 15-photo slideshows or opt for a Plus or Premium account. Once created, shows can be customized with over 600 built-in, drag and drop effects and easily shared online or downloaded to a computer.

ProShow Web expands Photodex’s ProShow product line to the web, providing a new platform for slideshow creation. Its quick, and easy since the service does most of the hard work. Mac (that’s right, I said Mac) users or PC users simply pick a theme, upload their content, choose a song from the royalty-free music library and ProShow Web instantly creates a polished video slideshow, ready to share or fine-tune further.

ProShow Web provides a robust collection of themes as well as over 600 drag and drop effects that can be mixed and matched to create a truly unique video. In addition, you can add even more effects through StylePacks and Transitions Packs, bringing the number of available effects up to over 1,000.

Finished shows stream as Flash video directly from ProShow Web and can be shared in a number of formats. Built-in social networking tools post videos to Facebook and upload directly to Youtube. Videos can be embedded or linked to directly from ProShowWeb.com and played back on the latest smart phones and devices as HTML5 video. Downloads let users save videos to their computer as an HD video file (up to 1080p for Premium accounts) or grab ready-to-burn disc images for DVD and Blu-ray.

A unique element exclusive to ProShow Web is the ability to download and edit any video created online into Photodex’s ProShow Producer. In Producer, users can trim video clips, crop and retouch photos, trim and fade audio tracks, set text formatting and fonts, create their own custom effects, layouts and much more.

ProShow Web is available in Free, Plus and Premium accounts. For more information and pricing, go to www.photodex.com.

Product Review: Digital Anarchy's Beauty Box Photo Plug-in

By Diane Berkenfeld

Digital Anarchy today released a new skin retouching program for still images, Beauty Box Photo. A Photoshop plug-in, Beauty Box Photo is compatible with Photoshop CS5 and earlier versions. The software is a follow-up to the company’s popular video retouching tool for After Effects CS5.

Beauty Box Photo skin retouching software automatically identifies skin tones and creates an intelligent mask that limits the smoothing effect to skin areas while keeping facial details sharp. You can use the software for batch processing too, which really helps speed up your workflow.

In Use Review

I had the opportunity to review a beta version of Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box Photo, using it with Photoshop CS4, and love the software. It has the power of high priced programs, yet the GUI or graphic user interface is simple to navigate and easy to use.

One of the great features of Beauty Box Photo is that it provides subtle yet visible retouching. Whether you use the automatic retouching or manually tweak the settings, the skin smoothing is subtle, so your portrait subjects look normal—skin does not look plastic or over-retouched. Pore structures and wrinkles are visible but softened.

(l. to r.) Screenshot showing 100% view before, and after. Photo © Diane Berkenfeld.

I found that the automatic mask did a wonderful job of masking the skin tone, not just on a face, but shoulders, arms—all visible skin in a photograph. You can very easily tweak the mask too, if necessary. Once you have the mask, you can fine tune the skin smoothing to your liking.

The software lets you take up to three snapshots of different amounts of smoothing, and you can toggle between each of them to choose which looks the best, and then apply that one. I personally would have liked to see a before/after button instead—although to the software’s credit, it lets you see up to three different settings which is more than a simple before/after or split screen would provide.

When it comes to retouching, sometimes less is better, meaning that Beauty Box does what it says it does—providing powerful skin smoothing without going overboard. And it is not overwhelming to use, like some software programs can be. This is great for the non-techie photographer or beginner digital imager.

The software is also very intuitive. I tested it out with a portrait of a 6 month old, a 4 year old and a 30-something. Each time the automatic settings provided a pretty good starting point. Less smoothing for the kids and more for the 30-something. Although I did tweak the settings, most folks would probably be happy with the program completely running on auto.

(l. to r.) Close-up view of the original non-retouched image (file open in Photoshop), and after (image in Beauty Box Photo's dialog window), using the automatic settings of Beauty Box Photo. Note the smoothing of the baby's blotchy red skin on his cheek. Photo © Diane Berkenfeld.

I definitely see Beauty Box as an addition to my retouching workflow. It makes it really easy to smooth skin for a pleasing look while leaving the skin looking realistic.

The photographs of the baby and child were for an actual job I was working on. I originally used a Photoshop action on the portraits, which while smoothing the skin also added a soft-focus glow that really was overboard for these images. The Beauty Box Photo skin smoothing was perfect—just enough to smooth out blotchy skin without overkill.

Beauty Box Photo works in Photoshop versions 7.0–CS5 and Photoshop Elements versions 6–9; on the Macintosh, running on OS 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6; and on Windows, the software supports Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Vista 32-bit, Vista 64-bit and Windows 7. In the next few months, Digital Anarchy will have a version compatible with Apple Aperture, and in the future (date tbd) with Adobe Lightroom.

Beauty Box is regularly priced at USD $99. The product is on sale for $79 through June 21, 2010.

For more information, to try out demo filters and view samples, go to www.digitalanarchy.com.