By Mike Mackenzie

Imagenomic (http://www.imagenomic.com) added Lightroom support to its portrait-retouching plug-in, appropriately called Portraiture. Installation couldn’t be easier and you can access the plug-in by Right-clicking on the photo and choosing Edit In>Imagenomic Portraiture, or in the Develop module via Photo>Edit In>Imagenomic Portraiture. So how easy is it to use and how are the results?

When you launch Portraiture, a TIFF copy of the photo opens in the plug-in and the Default preset is automatically applied. For many applications, the Default settings are very good. If they don’t work for your photo or you’re going after a certain look, you can click the Presets pop-up menu and choose from eight presets. You can also create your own presets for a signature style or for consistency in an ad campaign, catalog, or portrait series. The best thing is everything is customizable, from the portrait settings to the view options to export and batch processing.

If you’re not sure where to begin, Portraiture includes a 39-page PDF Help booklet to get you started, but they don’t leave you hanging. They also have a user forum and several excellent video tutorials on their website. The video tutorials cover everything from various workflows to creating certain looks to making Lightroom droplets. I highly recommend watching them.

Portraiture does a great job of softening skin while preserving texture, and the various presets work with all skin tones. I prefer working in the before-and-after split-screen view because you can zoom into your photo and see both versions of the image.

The Navigator panel is a nice touch and makes it easy to pinpoint your retouching. Though the interface looks fairly simple, Portraiture is powerful and the results are impressive. There’s a free 15-day demo available. For anyone who’s serious about portrait retouching, Portraiture should be considered essential.

Rating: 10 out of 10

(This review is brought to you courtesy of "Layers Magazine": http://www.layersmagazine.com ).