Now that everyone with at least a smartphone has become a “photographer,” you probably have an image-management system already. And if you have a DSLR, you’ve probably settled down with a favorite RAW processor. But if you haven’t yet decided on a processing-and-management system, or if you just love to dip your hands into digital color, you owe it to yourself to check out Corel’s latest release of AfterShot Pro.
With AfterShot Pro 3, Corel is challenging even the most established apps in the processing-and-management category. The interface is imminently customizable, with “unpinnable” panels; draggable tabs; collapsible sidebars; and a dark, low-distraction theme. If you like to keep the stylus in one hand and the other hand on the keyboard, you’ll find that there’s a keyboard shortcut for almost everything.
The usual suspects are in the adjustment lineup: color, tone, and detail adjustments; but you’ll also find options for editing metadata and for adding image or text watermarks. You’ll find RAW-noise reduction, which you probably expected; but there’s also Perfectly Clear noise reduction, which is perfect for images in a non-RAW format. And if you want to jump straight to OMG-I’m-Seriously-Impressed, go to the Standard tab and turn on Perfectly Clear under Basic Adjustments. I know: the last place you’d expect to find a man behind the curtain. If you do nothing else, you need to take a look at the Perfectly Clear feature. It seriously rocked my pixels.
At the other end of the workflow, you have slideshow generation, Web-gallery creation, batch processing,… more features and options than you would ever expect. Corel has covered this topic completely, from ingest to output. You’re going to think it’s Christmas in May! So download AfterShot Pro 3 and take your pics for a spin. The decision should be Perfectly Clear. ;-)