PhotoWorks 16.0: New Photo Editor to Bite the Big Mac
AMS Software has presented a new version of PhotoWorks – a multi-purpose photo editor. Over the past 15 iterations, this image editing software has been rising in prominence but retained one drawback – Windows exclusivity. Version 16.0 finally breaks that mold and opens up PhotoWorks to the Apple audience. It also introduces new features, which is a good reason to revisit the previous review and witness the progress.
Full disclosure: This sponsored article was brought to you by AMS Software
Multi-Purpose Editor: One for Everyone
PhotoWorks 16.0 keeps adding new features, yet remains quite easy to use. It offers plenty of one-click enhancements for rookies and people in a hurry. But manual editing enthusiasts will be equipped with essential features as well. Professional photographers may benefit from RAW files processing, especially since the new version supports RAW formats of the latest camera models.
PhotoWorks is also undemanding to your hardware and stably runs on mid-end laptops and computers. And the latest version of this photo editing software is available for Macs of almost any configuration powered by macOS Monterey or later.
Auto Correction: Work Smart, Not Hard
PhotoWorks’ major feature is one-click image enhancement. You literally click one button, and then a content-aware AI does all the heavy lifting – saturates color, enhances lighting, adjusts contrast, and performs other tweaks to make the image look its best.
In case you have a more specific correction in mind, smart tools will help you dehaze, denoise, and adjust colors with 3D LUT profiles. The new version also introduces LAB color profiles – a popular color correction method, allowing for a very natural tone shift.
AI-Based Retouching: No Limit to Perfection
Like many modern picture editors, PhotoWorks includes smart retouching tools based on content-aware AI. Removing unwanted objects without a trace is possible with a few healing brush strokes. The reverse is also viable – with PhotoWorks you can remove or replace the background around a certain object in a few steps. There’s even a dedicated tool to swap skies in landscape shots.
What makes PhotoWorks a real gem for portrait photography is a set of smart retouching tools. There’s an array of presets for most common issues – add slight tan, remove dark circles under the eyes, make the smile shiny, and do more in one click. Among available manual adjustments, there’s basic digital makeup, face and body line sculpting, red eye removal, and more. Version 16.0 also introduces a dedicated tool to remove skin defects and adjust the tone with a few slider tweaks.
Filters and Effects: Style is Substance
An array of 250+ filters and effects will help achieve a more artistic look for your shots. In one click, you can stylize your image to look like a shot from a classic movie, a picture taken with a certain analog film type, and whatnot. With such variety, you are likely to find something that matches your vision.
Along with one-click filters, some effects allow fine-tuning. This includes HDR, tone mapping, soft contrast, and more. Normally, effects like Matte or Glow are handmade with other photo editors, but PhotoWorks allows applying them with a click and adjusting with a few slider tweaks. For example, you can enhance a landscape shot with Sunrays – an effect you’d have to create manually with many other apps.
Workflow Automation: Focus on the Fun Parts
PhotoWorks features a Batch Processing mode that can spare you the tedium of editing every single shot from a set manually. In this mode, all of the available enhancements (from simple filters to color curve adjustments) are applied to as many images as you need at once. Furthermore, you can observe the changes for every picture with live preview.
The new version also allows you to copy settings for one image and apply them to another. For instance, you’ve made a set of pictures during a photo session using the same camera and lighting setup. More often than not, pictures of such sets would benefit from the same enhancements. In this case, editing a dozen photos with this image editor will not take much longer than editing one or two.
Text and Titles: Leave Your (Water)Mark
Text and titles are a specific type of embellishment that can turn a regular image into a poster, a greeting card, or promo material. There are plenty of premade text styles in PhotoWorks, but can you alter them enough to make your own, thanks to lots of adjustable parameters – from font and color to spacing and opacity. PhotoWorks 16.0 also allows you to fill text captions with color gradients, textures, and even images.
The text module also has a very practical use – branding images with watermarks of your own design. If you are a professional photographer and wish to protect your photos from online theft, then this feature might be a lifesaver, especially in tandem with the photo editor’s Batch Processing feature. The latest version of PhotoWorks also allows you to automatically cover your image with repeated watermarks completely.
PhotoWorks has enjoyed years of steady improvement while being a Windows exclusive, so now it comes to Mac in full force. Its toolkit has expanded significantly, but retained its original clarity and ease of use. PhotoWorks might still lack some high-end features like complex layering or tools for drawing, but, as a fast and effective picture editing software, it is worthy of your attention. If PhotoWorks does win you over, the vendor provides a discount coupon to PetaPixel readers.
Full disclosure: This sponsored article was brought to you by AMS Software
