Corel AfterShot Pro

With more and more people moving to digital SLRs, the need for software that can manage and make the most of photos shot with these higher-end cameras increases. The dominant player in photo workflow software among photo professionals has for a while been Adobe's Lightroom ($299, 4.5 stars), but Corel now offers a more affordable option of its own with AfterShot Pro ($99.99).

As a new, first-generation app from Corel, After Shot Pro draws on technology from the company's acquisition of Bibble Labs and from its own PaintShop Pro ($99.99 list, 3.5 stars) with an eye to honing the product down to just what pro photographers need, rather than including the raft of image embellishments offered in the Photoshop-emulating PaintShop Pro. How well does it succeed in offering a lower-cost alternative to Lightroom or to the identically priced CyberLink PhotoDirector ($99.99, 4 stars) and Serif PhotoPlus ($99.99 2.5 stars)? Read on to find out.

Interface
Installing AfterShot is quicker and simpler than do so with PhotoDirector, since it's a smaller download and doesn't require Microsoft C++ runtimes to be installed. Unlike most other photo workflow apps (notably Lightroom and PhotoDirector), AfterShot Pro does not use a "modal" interface, in which buttons or tabs take you through modes for organizing, editing, sharing, and whatever else the software though made sense to break down to it own separate task?print, Web, or whatever. Instead, you have a simple three (and sometimes four) panel interface, with the "Browse panel" on the left, the main image or gallery view in the center, and adjustment tools panel on the right.

The fourth panel is a filmstrip view of your source images, which you can alternately run across the top by choosing Toggle Orientation from the menu. You can easily toggle any of these panels on and off with arrow icons or View menu options. Added to this are buttons along the top for star-rating, flagging, rotating, and filtering photos. Along the bottom, another toolbar gives quick access to zooming, cropping, and white-balancing with a dropper. Finally, you can toggle clipping display with a warning symbol button here, which provides an easy way to see under and overexposed areas in your photo.

In addition to menus and interface toolbars, the program offers a generous selection of keyboard shortcuts, for accomplishing pretty much any photo or interface task available. I could easily switch to full screen view with either F11 or the arrow button at top-right, but there's no support for dual monitors, as PhotoDirector and Lightroom offer. A magnifier or "loupe" tool let me raise a magnifying glass to see a detail of the photo.

But the only way I could view the image nearly full screen was to start a slideshow, which necessitated an intervening dialog box; I'd prefer a simple one-click way to just see the photo, without any program chrome around it, as PhotoDirector lets you do just by hitting the F key. A multi-image view let me compare similar photos to choose the best one, but I could only view two images on top of each other, not side-by-side. And it also wouldn't let me move photos separately after zooming, and I could in PhotoDirector (though not in Lightroom, either). On the plus side, I do like how AfterShot lets you zoom with the mouse wheel.

You can undo actions, but there are no back and forward buttons or Reset button for those times when you just want to start over with an image. There is a small history window you can call from a menu option, and you can select the action you want to go back to. The reset all option is buried among the adjustment presets, which doesn't make much sense to me from an inteface standpoint.

This non-modal interface, as with Apple Aperture ($79, 4.5 stars) has the advantage of giving you access to all the program's features at all times, not requiring you to be in a particular "mode" to, for example, brighten or add tags to a photo. But modes have the advantage of encouraging an actual workflow?getting all your tagging and rating in, and then adjusting, then dealing with output.

Importing and Organizing Photos
AfterShot doesn't install an AutoPlay entry for when you plug in camera meeting, nor does it even offer an Import button. You have to choose the files from the left panel file tree view or choose Import From Folder or Import Select Files from the File menu. I really prefer photo workflow software to find and let me start an import along with import options when I plug in media, the way Lightroom does. In one way, AfterShot's importer seemed handy: I could just start working on an image without going through the import process; even when I closed the program, next time I opened it the photo I'd been working on had all the adjustments I'd made without requiring a save.

But after working with images on plugged-in camera media, when I unplugged the card, I wouldn't have a local copy, and the image wouldn't appear. I'd still have my edits next time I plugged in the media, but I guess I'd just prefer the app to enforce my importing photos with a big ol' Import button the way Lightroom and PhotoDirector have. I also ran into an issue where I thought I'd imported images, but a question mark appeared in their thumbnails, and when zoomed to 100 percent, they were highly pixelated.

When I did use the import feature, I was happy to see that I could apply tags and even presets like "bluer skies," "deeper shadows," and even "pseudo-Fisheye" along with some B&W options. Importing and creating thumbnails for 156 raw images, each about took just 2 minutes. After this, I had to switch the Browse panel to Library view to see my imported pics. The folder name there was taken from the media folder name, but I'd prefer dated groups, the way Windows 7's import creates. The only way to see images taken on a specific date was to use the Metadata browser and choose Date/Time. There was no way to see just photos from the "Last Import," the way you can in Lightroom, CyberLink PhotoDirector, or Serif PhotoPlus.

After several imports, the left panel's Library tab becomes cluttered, completely lacking the clear organization you get with other workflow software competitors. Also missing was the abilty to organize into new collections or galleries, as you can with Lightroom's Quick Collections and Smart Collections.

Once you've got your photo folders imported, you can easily rate each image with stars, flag it as a pick, or rotate it from buttons above the main viewing area, and you can do all this to multiple selected images at once, which is helpful. The filter button (with its funnel icon), brings up a mini window that lets you easily restrict the browse view to photos with the specified number of stars, color or flag. Keywording isn't set in the left Browse panel, but you have to dig for it on the Metadata tab of the right panel. No right-click option let me add keywords either, nor did the filter tool let me filter by keyword, but happily I could use the Library tab's Search bar to limit the display to photos with certain tags.

Display speed is a definite plus in AfterShot. Lightroom very quickly let me view and zoom raw files from my DSLR (a Canon EOS Rebel T1i): I didn?t have to wait for the image to refine as I did in Lightroom and PhotoDirector.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/cx2h6aGmQHY/0,2817,2398681,00.asp

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