PhotoDirector 365
Manage images, fix photo problems and get creative
£49.99 annual subscription/£13.99 monthly subscription FROM cyberlink.com NEEDS macOS 10.14 or later
Should prove attractive to dyed-in-thewool Adobe users as well as novices who want to get more creative
For decades now, Adobe has been the king of the image-editing castle. Lightroom enables you to organise, fix and share your photos while Photoshop lets you to edit them creatively using extra tools such as layers, text and filter effects. Over the years, various challengers have risen up to try and seize a chunk of Adobe’s territory and PhotoDirector 365 may have a fighting chance of success.
PhotoDirector 365’s key strength is that it combines Lightroom and Photoshop style tools into one app. PhotoDirector 365 enables you to make Lightroom style selective adjustments using graduated filters. It then lets you add new layers of content to the edited image to create the type of work you might produce in Photoshop. While Lightroom and Photoshop users subscribe to those apps for around £120 per year, you can subscribe to PhotoDirector 365 for less than half that price at £49.99. Subscribers to PhotoDirector 365 also receive new tools to download every quarter, keeping it fresh and functional. As a subscriber you can download a host of extra assets such as art filters, template layouts and even stock photos.
If you’re an established Lightroom user, you’ll be able to get to grips with
PhotoDirector 365 quite quickly thanks to similarities in its layout. As in Lightroom Classic, PhotoDirector’s Library module enables you to import and organise your files using star ratings and colour labels. You can then use filters to search for particular files according to specific ratings for example. You can then take shots into the Adjustment module which acts like Lightroom Classic’s Develop module. Here you’ll find a host of tools that enable you to adjust colour, tone and composition. Once you’ve tweaked a shot’s properties in the Adjustment module’s digital darkroom, you can take it into the Edit module to get more creative. Edit provides the option to combine multiple layers and use advanced content-aware tools to clone out unwanted objects as you would in Photoshop.
Easy editing
If you’re unfamiliar with Lightroom and Photoshop, don’t worry. PhotoDirector 365’s Welcome screen enables you to launch a cut-down Express version of the app that provides a host of one-click presets (like Photoshop filters) which quickly produce a range of creative looks.
Here you can mimic classic works of art using the AI Style Transfer workspace which turns pixels into paint. You can dial down the strength of the filter effects or use adjustable brush strokes to reduce the presence of the art effect in specific areas of the photo. As a subscriber, you can download more filters
from the Store tab by browsing through collections such as Oil Paintings.
The Guided workspace is an effective place for editing newcomers to develop their skills. For example, if you choose the Sky Replacement guided edit, it places a collection of sky presets and the tools you need to fine-tune the new sky in one panel. You can then use brush tools to add or remove the replacement. When viewed through delicate tree branches, we found traces of our test image’s original sky were difficult to replace. Luminar AI does a better job of adding new skies and provides more control.
The Guided edit workspace is packed full of effects. With guided Blur Tools, you can add circular or linear gradient blurs. The latter enables you to mimic a tilt-shift lens that makes full size objects look like toys. The new Glitch effect adds striking red, green and blue shifts that evokes RGB electronic display artefacts. You can fine-tune the vertical and horizontal colour shifts using sliders or restrict their presence using brush tips.
The Colour Splash guide enables you to create a spot-colour effect. Use an eyedropper to choose the colour that you want to isolate then use brush tips to mop up unwanted examples of that colour in other areas. Guided edits are springboards to mastering a wide range of tools and techniques.
One of the biggest challenges faced by content makers is finding source images for creative projects. Subscribers to PhotoDirector 365 can now import stock photos using the integrated Shutterstock Photo Browser. This accesses a curated collection of stock images rather than the full Shutterstock library, but it does contains useful lifestyle stock images.
Animation creation
One exciting new feature is Photo Animation. This enables you to animate areas, such as water lapping on a seashore while the foreground subject stays static. Brush-based masks and anchor points help freeze objects such as people while water laps and clouds float by in the background. The mask-editing brush tip is a little too sharp edged; it would be handy to have a feathering option to create more subtle blends between moving and static areas. However, it doesn’t take long to create striking looping animated GIFs that will draw attention to your social media posts.
Photoshop boasts a wider set of tools than PhotoDirector 365, but you would expect that in an app that costs double. PhotoDirector 365 should prove attractive to dyed-in-the-wool Adobe users as well as novices who want to fix photos and get more creative with their image editing. George Cairns