Skylum has news that will be of high interest to portrait photographers. It's an announcement of a dedicated app code-named "Project Barcelona." It's an app designed for professionals to enhance portrait retouching.
The company says it recognizes the increasing demand for time-saving tools in portrait photography that would enable professional and semi-professional photographers to focus on creative growth and client engagement.
Just as Luminar Neo provides convenient editing solutions for a broad set of photography challenges, this new app uses cutting-edge AI technology to help portrait photographers achieve top-quality retouching and inspire them with new creative possibilities.
Skylum is collaborating with renowned portrait photographer Julia Trotti to develop this specialized software solution. Set for release in September 2024, Project “Barcelona” will empower photographers by automating routine face retouching processes through an efficient, AI-optimized workflow that runs locally on the user’s device, making it as easy as applying presets. With the added advantage of precise and adjustable masking tools, it provides enhanced control and accuracy for perfect results every time. This, in turn, will allow portrait photographers to balance the time-intensive task of photo retouching with shooting and growing their photography business.
Features include:
- Skin Toning: Make subtle changes to the skin tone of specific areas thanks to an accurate facial skin segmentation model; remove the red hue or unify the overall color. On top of that, the new app's state-of-the-art face mesh model provides unique makeup correction capabilities, allowing the application of extra textures like blush, highlight, and contour, and changing the color of lips, brows, and other elements.
- Eye Enhancement: Add iris flare, remove redness, and adjust eye shape with a comprehensive suite of tools to perfect a subject’s eyes in portraits.
- Teeth Whitening: Ensure radiant smiles with advanced teeth whitening and brightening capabilities.
- Makeup Application: Enjoy customizable options for creative makeup styles and colors to complement any complexion, clothing, or backdrop.
- Bokeh Effects: Create stunning depth-of-field effects with the bokeh feature, adding dimension and allure to portraits.
- Body Enhancement: Adjust bodily proportions to correct posture and account for unflattering angles, making sure portraits capture subjects in their best light.
Getting the App
An early bird offer starts June 25, 2024. Find out more on Skylum’s website and sign up for the waiting list for early access.
There's no information on pricing yet, and Skylum wants to emphasize that this is a new app and new initiative. It doesn't mean it's replacing Luminar Neo, which is still in active development. Think of it as Luminar Neo for portrait photographers.
We should have a beta at some point in the near future and will report on how it works. Skylum says the app will be a native Mac and Windows app. No iOS or Android version, at least for now.
Many portrait photographers will see this as competition for Portrait Pro from Anthropics, a very popular portrait editor.
I would say Evoto is the one they should aim for and I'd be surprised if they're able to put together a better app than that. Still, if they manage to compete with the Evoto's awesome speed, wide range of features (which get updates monthly), great results AND they don't use a credit-based system, I'd be willing to switch.
So instead of adding this to improve their current product, which already has portrait retouching, they've created a whole new product and charge for that. Essentially for current customers, they'll now need two subscriptions if they want these new features. If that's the case, it's crap like this why they've received so much criticism in the past. Even Adobe is trickling down some of the Photoshop features to Lightroom so you can get done what you need to get done within one product, one subscription.
There was a time when Adobe was looked at as the bad guy. Skylum be like, "Hold my beer."
100% agreed.
Agreed! When there was Luminar AI, they suddenly repackaged much of it as Luminar NEO, which you had to buy again. Now we must start over and purchase this yet again...
The one thing I hope for that isn't listed here is using AI to automatically erase flyaway hairs. Such as time suck.
Evoto's Remove Stray Hair works really well.
I'll be interested to see how this compares to PortraitPro 24, which is currently on sale for $60. I'm glad this will be a stand-alone product, as I have no interest in Skylum's other products. Wish it weren't a subscription, though. Maybe I should just jump on the PortraitPro sale...
I've used PP forever. My current method is to make a separate layer in PS, process it in PP, then brush in the adjustments with a soft brush, 100% opacity, and maybe 6% flow. That gives me full control.