Hi there,

I did a search for these two third party skin/image retouching software and didn't find anything recent, so I thought I'd make a post and ask which of the two would you recommend for batch processing in Lightroom 5?

My situation is I shoot a lot of people and there are times where I'll have at least 30+ images from a set to deliver and rather than retouch each one in Lightroom or Photoshoop, I'd love to have one of these do most of the work for me. I have no problem going through each image one at a time to fine tune adjustments if these software do a good job with their skin smoothing AND integrate with Lightroom well.

The question: which of Imagenomics Portraiture or Portrait Professional will work better for me out of Lightroom? Like, say I selected 10 images at a time to edit in/or export to one of these software, which one will:

a) give me better, more consistent results based on the settings I give it and
b) automatically batch process the image doing their thing and then send it back to Lightroom as a virtual copy.

The part I'm not clear about is b). After the image is sent back to Lightroom as a retouched virtual copy, I'll obviously see the changes but will I be able to reopen it and tweak what was done, non-destructively (i.e. still raw images)? Or are the changes baked into the image and if I do additional fine tuning, is it back in the third party software and "from scratch" (Lightroom doesn't do layers), rather than seeing the adjustment sliders moved over wherever they were.

Anyhow, I'm likely going to get both, but because of time, I'm trying to figure out what people prefer using, so as to start focusing more on that one.

Andhow does it work for batch processing (using actions) with Photoshop for each? Same question, are the images changes saved as editable layers with each file as a PSD that can be edited later on?

Thanks for your feedback.

Ronald

They are not really comparable. PP is for quick and dirty. It is not for high end retouch. If you want to see what Portraiture can do look at the first 20 pictures in my port. I have both. I rarely use pp.

Nice skin smoothing on your photos Image Magik!

Really the only thing that's making like like Portrait Professional is that it included face reshaping tools, thus saving me a trip to liquify in Photoshop. Otherwise I do find that I am more drawn towards Portraiture.

You will not get virtual copy from any of this plugins. You will get pixel based TIFF in plugin folder. And you wouldn't be able to tweak it anyhow.

Oh, I see. I can't save them as layered PSD's, say from Imagenomic Portraiture if used as a Photoshop plugin? Or can I?

And if I batch process, say 10 images using the PS plugin, it outputs 10 retouched TIFF or PSDs wherever I tell it, right?

I use Imagenomics Portraiture with PS, although I have the LR part too just I never use LR much.

I allow it to make a mask in PS and I can dial it back if it is too much once I'm back into PS.  Works pretty well overall.  I believe they are trying to port it so it will work with other non-Adobe programs since The Cloud issue arose.

It just does skin and nothing else.  There is another that does eyes, teeth, adds back in skin texture, within PS called onOne Portrait that I also use.  They make a stand-alone called "Perfect Photo Suite 7" too that has it.

I use lightroom religously.. and IP is the freakin way to go.. I edited 68 shots today in a batch edit for a woman that had excessive stretch marks from her 3 children... and I must say, without the portriature plugin on my lightroom, I wouldn't have gotten it all done.

I have loved it since the day I paid for it.

Everyone is using Portraiture these days.  Don't get me wrong, Portrait Pro is good.  I use it all the time. But if you are torn between buying one or the other, go with Portraiture.

i've batched portraiture over a session using a photoshop action before. portraiture has a bunch of pre-built photoshop actions you can download. the thing is sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and when it doesn't it blurs hair and other things you might not want blurred (eyes, mouth). it really depends on the skin tone of the model and their hair color.

i concluded that batching was fine for proofs but maybe not so reliable for final images. also sometimes i run portraiture twice otherwise it may miss shadow areas of skin.

i don't batch portraiture over our weddings. i just use aperture's skin smoothing (if i even do that). mostly i just fix blemishes.