Serif PhotoPlus X7 £80 / $125 Windows
Photoshop power at a budget price
hotoPlus’s similarity to Photoshop is obvious, right down to the screen layout, with a tools palette on the left, tool options on the top toolbar and stacked palettes including adjustments and layers on the right. But then the two programs diverge. PhotoPlus X7 has beginners in mind, and features an array of Studios for creating different photo effects.
There’s a general-purpose PhotoFix Studio, for example, plus Makeover Studio, Black and White Studio, Warp Studio, Cutout Studio and Print Studio.
This latest version adds support for Lab mode (useful for certain kinds of colour adjustment), lens
Pcorrections and a Clarity filter, which boosts local contrast for added definition. The Clone tool from earlier releases is improved, with an advanced live preview; the PhotoFix Studio has a Smart Brush tool for applying adjustments to specific areas; and there are three new blend modes for layers: Vivid Light, Hard Mix and Pin Light.
Performance
These features are worth having, but they don’t address PhotoPlus’s principal failings. One problem is that it’s confusing – why have a PhotoFix window, for example, that carries out what look like similar adjustments to the main editor window? Another is the poor quality of some of the tools. The slow and ponderous Cutout Studio, for example, had trouble cutting out a dark grey set against a near-white sky – a simple subject.
Worst of all, though, is the Raw Studio. This supports most cameras (there’s a list on the Serif website), but the quality between models varies massively. The results from a Nikon D7100 seemed OK, but those from a Nikon D5200 looked dark and muddy. As if that wasn’t enough, if you try to open a raw file that PhotoPlus X7 doesn’t support, it doesn’t tell you so – it just creates a really bad conversion with distorted colours and muddy tonal rendition.
In itself, PhotoPlus X7 is patchy but reasonable – but the low quality of its raw conversions is a major drawback for anyone using it to work on their own photos.