Review: Anthropics Portrait Professional 6 image-editing software

High-quality retouching at an ultra-low price

Photo retouching is a time-consuming and highly skilled process that usually requires years of practice and considerable proficiency with applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

With Portrait Professional, you can achieve similar magazine cover-quality portraits by simply marking out a few key points and moving some slider controls.

The application is based on a model of human faces that has been pre-trained by examining photos of hundreds of people, of varying levels of attractiveness, in well-shot portraits. With this database of facial knowledge, the software takes your original photo and makes adjustments to balance and subtly shape the subject's facial features while also improving on lighting and reducing camera defects.

There are two steps to creating your portrait. First the software guides you through a process of defining the main facial features; clicking in the corners of the eyes, the tip of the nose and edges of the mouth provides all the data required. Once these points have been defined, a simple wireframe outline is overlaid on the picture and you can make adjustments to it by dragging points around to get the best match.

When the points are lined up, Portrait Professional 6 processes the image, taking only a few seconds to transform it into what is hopefully an improvement on the original. Alongside the portrait you're presented with a selection of dials and sliders for step two. By adjusting these controls, you can make dramatic or subtle alterations to the image with a precise level of control.

This process is much easier than you might expect, because you need no prior knowledge of what makes an attractive portrait; you just move a slider and stop it when you like the results.

The controls are split into six main sections - Face Sculpt, Skin, Eye, Mouth, Lighting and Picture. The Face Sculpt section performs what would probably be the most difficult transformations were you to be using traditional software such as Adobe Photoshop. You can individually adjust the shape of the head, jaw and nose, and there are more sophisticated controls for manipulating the eyes and mouth.

It's also possible to widen, narrow or balance features, as well as make adjustments to the facial expression. Skin adjustments help you smooth out and brighten the skin, removing spots and wrinkles and closing pores as necessary.

Move the sliders too far and you'll end up with some pretty grotesque faces; what starts off as a light foundation can turn your face rapidly into an omelette with eyes. But keep it subtle and you can create a professional and very realistic result in just a few minutes. With Portrait Professional, you can give your subject the full star treatment, bringing out whatís already there without losing the original character of the photograph.

Portrait Professional is cable of improving just about any portrait, but it works much better with high-quality original material.

To get the very best results, you'll need to start with 16-bit or RAW images taken in your camera's highest quality mode. Portrait Professional's Max option allows you to do this and is available as an add-on for an extra £24.95, or you can buy it along with Portrait Professional at a discount.

Don't let the insanely low price fool you; Portrait Professional 6 is a tremendously powerful piece of software that can produce stunning results when used wisely.