Lightroom Plug-Ins

My Favorite Plug-ins from OnOne Just Got Better

Lightroom and Photoshop plug-ins are huge these days. Just about every person I run in to uses at least one (if not several). Well, one of my favorites from onOne Software, just got even better. Today they announced their Perfect Photo Suite 9 is available for download. They announced the new version last month at Photoshop World in Vegas, but it’s actually shipping (or downloading) today 🙂

So what’s new? I’ll run down the list of my favorite features:
• They’ve really overhauled their Browse module. I’ve spoken many times to the engineers and folks at onOne about how a lot of Lightroom users use something on the front-end to look at their photos quickly (Lightroom is great at a lot of things, but it’s not known for being super-quick for importing/browsing photos). So they totally redid the Browse module in the Photo Suite, to be really fast. But they also let you rate, rank and add keywords there too, so you can pick your favorites while you’re browsing through. Then, if you import to Lightroom, it’ll recognize that info and keep it so you can get to work fast in LR.

• I know it’s listed as one of the last thing’s on their feature list, but I love the new Lens Flare filter. I guess because I’m always shooting in to the sun in my photos, so this helps me enhance the effect, or get it if I’m not able to get that much sun in the photo.

• Selections are huge, and they’ve made it easier to make a selection by putting the tools throughout the suite, not just in the Masking module.

• There’s a new Smart Photos feature that works a lot like Smart Objects in Photoshop. So all of your editing steps are saved with a Smart Photo, so you can make changes to a photo

• I do all of my noise reduction in Lightroom, but if you’re using the suite as a standalone editor, you now have some great noise reduction included.

• There’s lots of other little things like Retina support, and better auto correction adjustments. For the full list, take a look at their blog post.

Here’s a link to their product page where you can find out more and download a free trial. Enjoy!

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11 comments

  1. Gary Anderson 10 November, 2014 at 15:01 Reply

    Perfect Photo Suite will be better, but it aint there right now. There are compatibility issues with Wacom Tablets, Favorites List doesn’t function properly, crashes frequently. This should have been released as a beta version so it could be tested on a broad spectrum of equipment. I’m disappointed. I won’t be using it until the next release. 🙁

  2. Siebe Hoekstra 10 November, 2014 at 09:50 Reply

    Hi Matt,

    Since your Vice President of Photography at onOne Software now (congrats!), maybe you could look into this issue with Perfect Photo Suite 9.

    My PC meets the system requirements more than enough. Even got 512 MB dedicated video RAM. The only thing is, Perfect Photo Suite 9 doesn’t support the Intel graphics cards any longer, and keeps telling me that my graphics card doesn’t support OpenGL 2.0. Meanwhile, OnOne’s DoctorGL software notices my Intel HD Graphics 3000 supports full OpenGL up to version 3.1.0!?

    Rather strange, for we all know processing photos doesn’t take that much of a video card. Even photoshop C6 64 bits runs smoothly on my PC.

    Please could you make this one of the first issues to take a look at being Vice President of Photography at onOne Software? Thanks a lot!

  3. Johnny 4 November, 2014 at 12:15 Reply

    OnOne seems to offer a free version of PerfectEffects… but you can buy PE also in their store. Is the free version the same or does it come with less functions?

  4. Bill Wells 2 November, 2014 at 19:23 Reply

    If you are a masking brush user this IS NOT the update you need. THERE IS NOT MASKING FROM THE PHOTOSHOP PLUG-IN!!! I used perfect mask for masking composites and while it was not “perfect” it was close enough, really good in fact. Now it’s gone. They say it’s in all the modules but it’s not. You can mask out the effect but not the background.

    The pre-sales hype showed the improvements in image masking. What they did was include it in the layers module. The problem with that is you can’t get to layers module from the photoshop plugin.

    You have to save and close your image, open perfect suite as stand-alone application. Then get into layers the do masking. Now save your image. Open it again in photoshop use whatever actions or edits you need then complete composites and save again.

    For my use, a BIG mistake for OnOne.

  5. Andy 31 October, 2014 at 22:14 Reply

    ***moderator please ignore my previous post – hit submit too early! *****

    I have used Perfect Photo Suite 8 for the past year and thought is was good, but I’m really struggling to justify upgrading to Photo Suite 9 (currently have a trial version). Sure there are some nice enhancements, but there are no show stoppers to warrant the $100 upgrade cost as far as I’m concerned. Sure the speed is better, but I was satisfied with the speed of the previous version. Smart Photos is already covered by Photoshop CC. The new noise reduction is not as good as Lightroom and way behind the likes of Topaz DeNoise or Nik Dfine.

    Seems that onOne is trying to position Perfect Photo Suite more and more as a Lightroom/Photoshop alternative. I like onOne as a company but they are going to have to provide a far more compelling update and possibly offer something completely new to get me to part with $100/year. To put it in perspective $120/year will get you Lightroom and Photoshop CC and some of onOne’s competitors offer free for life updates to their plug-ins (yes, I know this could change). Therefore, sorry onOne, but I’m skipping version 9 and waiting to see what you have in store for version 10.

  6. william chinn 30 October, 2014 at 19:15 Reply

    Bummer. It loks like OnOne dropped out of KelbyOne’s discounts prior to the release date. I have to wait anyway as we are away from my desktop on an unsecured wifi coonection.

  7. Mark Coons 30 October, 2014 at 07:56 Reply

    I was hoping based on reports I reading that the updated browse module would become a front end to Lightroom but that is not my first impression.

    I opened a fair sized folder of raw images in the Browse module and I was impressed, it let me view the images very quickly. Very fast. I could then scroll through the images and ‘pick’ the ones I wanted to edit. But there does not seem to me to be a way to highlight the picked photos, like you can in Lightroom. I had to highlight the picked images one at a time. I could have done this much faster in LR.

    Or did I miss something?

  8. Jeff Perry 29 October, 2014 at 21:14 Reply

    Great software, unfortunately OnOne apparenlty rolled out a product without adequate beta testing on different hardware as there have been numerous “false positve” errors dealing with the OpenGL 2.0 video controllers. Apparently when the software checks for the minimum hardware components in the graphics card on start-up, it apparently doesn’t find the right stuff on certain hardware setups (my Nvidia GFrorce equiped Vaio included which does in fact have the right stuff). OnOne’s Support page has posted a notice about the issue, saying their engineers are looking into it and hope to have a fix soon. Let’s hope so. I am so glad I didn’t let the installer delete my old installed version.

    • CD 31 December, 2014 at 09:33 Reply

      I’vr been a big fan of OnOne software for years, but it seems with each new version, they make things less functional and more complex. I installed PPS 9 a few weeks ago and absolutely hate it. Nothing but problems from first use. I’ve reinstalled it a dozen times and contacted tech support (that’s a misnomer) but nothing has fixed the many issues, like s-l-o-w filter functioning, erratic dialing in of filter intensity, reversal of filters after applying, and random hang-ups that are stopped only by force quitting. It’s a massive mess, and totally useless. Makes me wonder what the heck OnOne is doing.

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