Okay, let me start out this post by saying I'm still totally in love with Adobe Lightroom. If it were senior prom time, Lightroom would definitely be my first choice as a date. My feelings for her, uh, I mean it, haven't changed. It's still my favorite photo processing tool and I don't see myself giving it up for anything. I probably use it more than 60% of the time and use Photoshop probably 5% of the time. Now for you math wizards out there, you know that leaves somewhere around 35% unaccounted for. That's where this new girl, uh, I mean software, comes in. Today we're going to talk about Perfectly Clear. Although the technology in this product has been around for a while, it's primarily been licensed out to other companies to incorporate into their own products. However, their standalone products, phone apps, and plug-ins for Lightroom and PhotoShop are becoming more and more popular. I finally decided to give it a try and I'm glad I did.
The photo on the left is a raw photo unprocessed and the photo on the right is using Perfectly Clear... One click!
So let's take a step back. For me, I focus my time differently on different photos. Some I spend a lot of time on and others, not so much. Let's look at two examples. Let's say you go and do a portrait shoot of a family and you take 200 photos. Now of those 200, let's say 20 are really good and ones you want to post process for this family. You bring 18 of them into Lightoom, do a great job and two of them you REALLY like and you take those into Photoshop to really focus on them and make them perfect. There you go.... 200 photos total, 20 good ones, 18 processed in Lightroom and 2 in Photoshop. That means there was 180 that you didn't even touch.
Now let's go to a different scenario. Let's say you're taking photos at a family birthday party. Grandma and Grandpa are there... Aunts and Uncles... even that crazy Uncle that nobody in the family talks about. They're all there. Let's say again, you take 200 photos. But these are 200 family photos and although all aren't great, you'll want to process and share all of them with family and friends. So what do you do? Process all 200 in Lightroom? Well, that's what I would have done previously, but let's be honest, that could take a long time, but that's why we're talking about Perfectly Clear. A week or so I did a shoot that included a whole bunch of different people and I didn't know who would want photos of themselves and who wouldn't, so I wanted to process all of the good photos, which ended up being about 150. Now if I was to spend the time to process all of these photos in Lightroom, it would take quite some time. Even if I spent only a few minutes on each one, which is definitely possible, that was more time than I wanted to spend on these photos, considering I didn't even know most of the people. So, I downloaded the free trial of Perfectly Clear. With Perfectly Clear you simply load the Plug-in and your selected photo(s) are corrected automatically, with literally one click. By applying over 15 patented corrections and 10 years of research, Perfectly Clear saves time and produces accurately beautiful photos. So what's the catch? Well, you don't have a lot of control. In Lightroom you can control color, crop, temperature, shadows, highlights, do tons of local corrections and adjustments and lots more. Perfectly Clear is kind of a "one-click pony," but it does a great job. When you just want a bunch of your photos to look great, but not spend the time or be as specific in your corrections as you would when using Lightroom, use Perfectly Clear. You just select the photos you want to process and open them with Perfectly Clear. They're almost instantly color corrected and processed and more often than not they look really, really good. You do have some options as to personalizing Perfectly Clear's correction. You have sliders that will allow you to make changes to the exposure, tone, highlights and a few others, but not nearly the control you have in Lightroom. Now this program absolutely won't replace Lightroom. For photos I really like and want to look their best, there's no replacing the control and accuracy that Lightroom provides, but for those photos that you want to look good, but just don't care as much about, try Perfectly Clear. I'm using the 30-day free trial now, but imagine I'll end up buying the software when the trial runs out. It's more expensive than lightroom, about $199, but if you use the link below, you'll save 20%! Give it a try... I'm sure you'll like it!
Perfectly Clear is one stop-clicking for clearer and cooler shots. If you go to this page, hosted by Rick Sammon, one of my favorite photographers, you can save 20% on this plug-in that can turn flat shots to fab shots, with a few clicks of your mouse.
