Either I had found a program bug, which I’m sure will be addressed, or the stand-alone version is not meant to be used with RAW files it worked fine with JPEGs, TIFFs and PSD files. However, when I opened the same RAW files into Perfect Layers from Lightroom, the exposure was perfect. When I saved the file, the resulting PSD file showed the same tonalities, shown in the figure below.īelow is the image as it appears in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, showing perfect exposure and no blown-out highlights. But in the Perfect Layers preview window the highlights were significantly blown out and the mid to dark tones were very flat and washed out. One had a bright area but it was not blown out. I opened the program as a stand-alone and chose two RAW files from my Canon 5D Mk II. My first try at using the program encountered a problem. psd file with the layers intact and editable. To save your layered image, go to File > Save. To load the desired files (PSD, TIFF, JPEG or RAW) go to File > Open and navigate to them. It can also be run as a stand-alone program. The program is accessed from Lightroom by going to File > Plug-In Extras > Perfect Layers. Installation is simple and straightforward and there is an introductory screen with an overview of the program and a link to online videos. You have the most commonly used modes available: Normal, Lighten, Darken, Screen, Multiply, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light and Color. And you can change the blending mode of a layer to alter how it interacts with the layer below, which will change the image’s appearance. You can change the order of layers in the stack by dragging and dropping. You can also add a solid color fill layer to simulate colored filters on a lens. You can stack pixel layers and conceal parts of the top layer to reveal the underlying layer by painting with a Masking Brush or by making gradients or vignettes with a MaskingBug. Perfect Layers allows you to open several files as a stack of layers. And if you don’t have Photoshop or an image editor that does layers, you will gain valuable capabilities working with layers gives you tremendous creative power.Ī lot of people who use Photoshop haven’t delved into layers, and for those folks Perfect Layers is an introduction, providing an interface that makes it easy to learn the concepts and possibilities, and what you learn will carry over to Photoshop. This program doesn’t give you any capabilities you don’t have in Photoshop (even considerably older versions) and some other image editors, but it streamlines your workflow by letting you stay in Lightroom or Aperture for more kinds of image adjustments. It also works as a standalone to let you combine images from any source, including RAW images.
PERFECT LAYERS .9 SOFTWARE
The new Perfect Layers plug-in from OnOne Software is another step in the advancement of Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture, adding more power to their image editor functions. Is it a low-cost way to do layers, or too buggy for prime time?
OnOne claims Perfect Layers lets you work in layers even if your image-editing software doesn’t have this option.