Do you ever want to speed up your portrait editing workflow? Do you ever wish you could do comprehensive, professional editing simply by adjusting a few sliders?
Then consider PortraitPro 22, the latest and greatest version of Anthropics’ portrait editing software. It’s designed to offer both professionals and amateurs a way to create refined, subtle edits with only a few minutes of work and minimal effort.
Thanks to Anthropics’ outstanding AI technology, you can apply a wide variety of edits – including face shaping, hair coloring, and even relighting – by moving a slider. And for those who want to cut down their editing time even further, PortraitPro offers dozens of intelligent presets and easy batch-editing options, so you can (genuinely!) edit hundreds of portraits in a few seconds.
In this PortraitPro 22 review, we offer an in-depth look at the program’s different features, benefits, and pricing options. By the time you’re finished reading, you’ll understand what makes the software so special, and you’ll know whether it’s right for you.
Let’s get started.
What’s new in PortraitPro 22?
The original PortraitPro debuted way back in 2006, and since then, Anthropics has steadily improved the powerful portrait editor. This iteration – version 22 – is better than ever.
In addition to the bevy of innovative retouching tools available in version 21, PortraitPro 22 offers a few handy additions, including:
- Hairline correction, which lets you quickly and easily improve a subject’s hairline
- Neck and shoulders sliders, which let you adjust your subject’s neck and shoulder shape as needed
- Body lighting controls, which let you make realistic adjustments to the lighting effects across your subject’s entire body
- A Chin slider, which lets you add shadows under the subject’s chin
For the serious portrait photographer, these upgrades are insanely powerful. Imagine adjusting the direction and quality of the light falling on your entire subject – and making changes that add drama, contrast, three-dimensionality, and more. Even portrait photography beginners will appreciate the power of these relighting tools and the ease with which PortraitPro can now adjust hairlines, necks, chins, and shoulders.
In short: If you already own a previous version of Portrait Pro, version 22 is certainly worth the upgrade. Note that you won’t need to pay full price; all upgrades come at a 25% discount.
Layout and ease of use
PortraitPro 22 is ridiculously easy to use; getting started requires zero editing knowledge and zero familiarity with post-processing software.
Head over to the Anthropics website, purchase your software and follow the installation steps. When you open PortraitPro, you’ll see a set of tutorials, and unless you’ve used PortraitPro before, I do recommend you watch “First Steps.” It’ll take you on a guided tour of the software’s interface and explain everything you need to know before you can dive into actual editing work.
Once you’re ready to move on, choose the Open Single Image option in the right-hand corner, pick the file you wish to edit, then hit Open.
And just watch as PortraitPro’s AI technology goes to work analyzing your subject’s face, identifying the eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and more. The analysis takes a second or two, but it’s a display I never grow tired of seeing – and once the process is over, you can dig in and start making adjustments.
The PortraitPro layout is simple and intuitive. No, it’s not especially sleek, but that’s okay; the workspace is designed to put functionality first. In the center of the screen, you’ll see your photo:
You can change the photo view by selecting from a few different options. The default view – View After Only – shows you only your edited image, but the View Before and After shows you the edited and unedited versions side by side, which can come in handy if you want to make sure you don’t take your edits too far.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you’ll see all your editing options, located in four panels: Controls, Presets, Snapshots, and History.
The Controls panel contains an array of editing tools, which let you adjust just about every portrait feature you can think of, while the Presets panel lets you speed up your workflow with one-click adjustments that are intelligently applied to each image:
Most of the editing tools exist in slider form, so adjusting your subject’s face shape, hair volume, or eye brightness is as simple as clicking and dragging. In the rare case that the edit isn’t applied using a slider – such as when adjusting hair color, cropping the frame, or replacing the image background – the process remains both quick and intuitive. And if you ever get stuck, you can click the question mark icon next to the control, and PortraitPro will send you to a page with detailed instructions.
By the way, the Studio Max version of PortraitPro does offer a batch-processing workflow, which you can access on the home page. If you have this option, you can open dozens of images and instantly apply presets. Then you can click on the individual images to fine-tune the results via the editing controls.
Note that, unlike traditional batch-editing processes, PortraitPro 22 intelligently applies each and every preset based on your subject’s face structure. That way, you can avoid error-prone one-size-fits-all presets and quickly apply edits that are specific to each image.
It’s pretty amazing and it saves an insane amount of time. For wedding and portrait shooters who capture a large volume of portraits on a regular basis, it makes the Studio Max version well worth the cost.
Editing tools
PortraitPro 22’s editing tools are comprehensive, powerful, and shockingly efficient. If you’ve never used PortraitPro before, you’re in for a treat; what might have taken years of study and hours of painstaking work in Photoshop can be done in a few seconds using PortraitPro sliders, no matter your experience level.
The program offers a huge group of editing tools designed to target different facial features and image elements. Fortunately, they’re well organized, so you never feel overwhelmed. You can work your way down the panel or you can jump around; either works, and it’s really all about creating a process that works for you.
For instance, you might start with the Shape tab, which includes sliders that:
- Reshape the face, eyes, mouth, nose, neck, and shoulders
- Change the subject’s expression
- Adjust the subject’s hairline
- Correct for distortion
Note that most of these sliders include sub-sliders that you make even more fine-grained changes. The Mouth Shape tool lets you adjust the upper lip and lower lip separately:
While the Face Shape tool lets you independently shape the forehead and jaw.
In other words, when it comes to PortraitPro, you’re given the power to make sweeping changes, but you also have the option to customize and fine-tune to your heart’s content.
Once you’re done with face and body shaping, you can move down to the Skin Smoothing tab, where you’ll see around a dozen sliders designed to selectively smooth your subject’s skin.
Working with the skin smoothing sliders is as easy as you’d expect, and you’ll have your subject’s skin looking better in no time at all. PortraitPro automatically detects the relevant areas, but if the skin adjustments are incorrectly targeted, you can always alter the skin mask by clicking on the View/Edit Skin Mask button and make adjustments via the skin mask brushes.
Unlike many skin-smoothing tools, PortraitPro’s Skin Smoothing panel makes it easy to apply adjustments that actually seem natural. And that’s true across the board; the Makeup, Hair, Eye, and Mouth & Nose tabs are powerful, but the results look realistic, not fake.
One more tab deserves special mention:
The Lighting & Coloring tab, which is quite possibly the most powerful portrait-editing option I’ve ever encountered. With its tools, you can adjust the light and shadows on your subject’s face and body, and if you don’t like the lighting direction, you can even reposition the light using a handy interactive tool:
What’s especially amazing is how natural it all appears. You can move the light “source” from one side of the subject to the other, and the shadows and highlights shift as if you’re really adjusting a studio light. It’s a great way to add drama, bring out different facial features, and just have fun exploring different effects.
While PortraitPro makes it easy to enhance portraits via the sliders, if you want to cut down your editing time even further, you should check out the Presets panel. There, you can apply one-click adjustments that adjust the entire subject or use specific editing tabs to target features independently. As I mentioned above, PortraitPro’s presets are applied intelligently based on an analysis of facial features. You don’t need to worry about a preset giving wildly different results depending on the subject; the presets are modified from image to image to account for changes in subjects and angles.
PortraitPro offers literally hundreds of high-quality presets, though you can always make your own to suit your specific workflow. And to kick things up yet another notch, you can combine the presets with the batch-editing option (discussed in the previous section) to intelligently edit entire sets of images in a handful of seconds.
Bottom line: PortraitPro 22 offers editing tools that are easy to use, give great results, and will save you lots of time. If you’re a beginner, a professional, or anything in between, you’re bound to be impressed!
Speed and performance
Most AI-based tools require a lot of processing power, which can result in a sluggish editing performance – so while the tools work well in theory, users can quickly become frustrated as they wait for each and every little adjustment to load.
Not PortraitPro 22.
I don’t know what kind of wizardry the Anthropics team has included in their software, but PortraitPro is fast. Most edits are visible in real-time, including complex options that require auto-generated masks. It does take a few seconds for images to load when first imported, but after that, you shouldn’t run into any issues, even if you spend time clicking back and forth between different presets.
Of course, performance will vary depending on your hardware, and I can’t speak for everyone. But my computer isn’t especially advanced and I ran into zero issues, so I’m guessing that most users will be just fine.
For reference, here are the PortraitPro system requirements:
- Processor: 2 GHz or faster
- RAM: 2 GB (though 4 GB is recommended for large files)
- Display: 1024×600
- Operating system: Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.14 or later
Price
PortraitPro is available as a one-time purchase. Anthropics offers three editions, each with a different price.
The Standard edition costs $54.95, and it features all of the core functionality discussed above, minus the batch-processing option. However, the Standard edition isn’t capable of editing RAW files, which is a major drawback for anyone who prefers to make all their edits inside of the PortraitPro interface.
The Studio edition costs $84.95, and it includes everything offered in the Standard version plus limited batch processing options and the ability to handle RAW files. You also get a Photoshop plugin so you can integrate PortraitPro edits into your existing processing workflow if desired.
Finally, the Studio Max edition costs $169.95. It offers everything in the Studio edition, but the batch-processing tool is upgraded so you can apply presets to dozens of images at once.
So which edition should you get? If you’re a hobbyist and you only ever edit a few images at once, I’d recommend the Studio PortraitPro option. The price is very reasonable (the program costs far less than a yearly Lightroom and Photoshop subscription), and you get a full-fledged portrait editor, RAW processing capabilities, and a batch-editing interface.
On the other hand, if you want to quickly edit hundreds of images at once, it’s probably worth springing for the Studio Max edition. If you’re not sure whether the upgrade is worth it, you can always test out the batch-processing feature with a free trial.
Note: Anthropics is currently running a 50%-off sale (which is reflected in the prices above). Therefore, if you’re thinking about purchasing PortraitPro, it’s better to buy sooner rather than later! Also, dPS readers can get an additional 15% knocked off the price by using this special code: DPS922.
Is Anthropics PortraitPro 22 right for you?
PortraitPro 22 is ultra powerful, it offers professional results, and it’ll dramatically accelerate any portrait post-processing workflow. It’s miles easier to use than Photoshop, and it’s very reasonably priced, especially for those who don’t require advanced batch-processing (and for those who do, the extra money is undoubtedly worth the saved time and effort).
In other words, PortraitPro is perfect for pretty much any portrait or wedding photographer, beginners and experts alike. So whether you’re just getting started or you’re a veteran portraitist looking to speed up your editing, I encourage you to grab your copy from the Anthropics website!
Alternatively, you can download a free trial here.
Special offer: Get 50% off new purchases or upgrades (and use the code DPS922 for an extra 15% off!).
Anthropics is a paid partner of dPS.
