Imerge Pro Wants to Dethrone Photoshop, Adds Several New Features

Oct 22, 2020

When Adobe sunsetted the Creative Suite and built the subscription-based Creative Cloud, many users were upset at losing perpetual access to the software. Products like Imerge Pro can now exist, offering similar software for a one-time fee.

If you’ve never heard of Imerge, you’re probably not alone. It’s not a particularly well-known software, but the latest update to Imerge Pro 8 brings some much-needed enhancements to the interface that might bring the software in line with the expectations of professionals. Thanks to Canon RAW support, the addition of a clone stamp and healing brush as well as support for non-destructive 16-bit RAW editing, and several other enhancements, the software suddenly looks like a real competitor to Photoshop.

Imerge has what they coin a “bespoke RAW engine” that is GPU accelerated, which the company claims “gets the best out of your photography.”

The latest version introduces split toning and gradient mapping, two much-needed features. The Split Toning tool looks intuitively designed, which would allow you to easily determine complementary colors quickly. Additionally, Hue positions can be locked in relative to each other so that adjusting one color will automatically adjust the other.

The Gradient Map tool looks particularly robust, and apparently, you can create near-unlimited custom cinematic grades using up to 16 color points, each with full RGBA control. Within that, you can choose among Imerge’s 20 different blend modes to achieve different effects.

With the updates to Imerge Pro 8, the platform is particularly robust: