By Daniel M. East

There’s vast array of correction tools available for Photoshop, and it’s important to learn which are effective and a good value before making a purchase. Unfortunately, the Pixel Gear Pro Pack Bundle (US$329) by PSKiss (http://www.pskiss.com) misses the mark for output quality, and the lovely packaging and presentation by the developer only add to the disappointment.

The Pixel Gear Pro Pack includes PSKiss Edge Gear, S/H Tone Gear Pro, and Skin Gear Pro. Each of the Pixel Gear tools is effective, but the preview window, as a result of using Adobe Pixel Bender, is inaccurate and doesn’t properly represent the effect level in the output. Some test images required extreme levels of the effect to be effective.

The panel launched from the Extensions under the Window menu shows a word clearly intended to be “tutorial” as “toturial.” While a common error in spelling, it further indicates that PSKiss needs more attention to making this product presentable. Clearly, the intentions are good here, but the products are not ready for the masses. The real issue is that you can do most of the tasks these products cover in Photoshop CS5.

By comparison, Kodak’s nearly ten-year-old ASF Plug-in technologies have a higher price and still outperform this new release for output quality, interface, and ease of use. Imagenomic’s Portraiture is at the top of the short list of newer skin-smoothing plug-ins, with an even higher price tag, but it delivers.

I hope that PSKiss presents new versions of their products that exceed expectations. There are some promising concepts in this soft­ware, but they will require more than good promotional materials and packaging if they hope to stand out from the rest.

Rating: 6 out of 10

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