This is a premature declaration. Last evening, I downloaded my upgrade to the OnOne Perfect Suite. OnOne Suite is more suited to studio operations because it has masking and portrait retouching tools. I sprung for the upgrade because I thought it might make fast work of the portrait processing I am doing for the Dixie Memory Makers (Help-Portrait) event this coming Saturday, December 10.
I only spent an hour fiddling with it. I didn’t do any of the tutorials. I have never taken advantage of the OnOne training resources. Here’s my early opinion…
- This is not thoroughly tested software. I behaves like it is still in Beta. It locks up. I know what I am talking about after being a software manager for a number of years. The quality control didn’t come close to what I enjoy in the NIK Software Suite.
- Installation has some hiccups. The end result is not as illustrated in the help file.
- The masking piece, unfortunately, requires acquired skill that I don’t have yet. It is not obvious. I am giving it the benefit of doubt.
- The portrait retouching piece seems like it will be useful once I train myself. It seems a bit too automated, but maybe that can be reconfigured.
- Perfect Resize (Genuine Fractals) has always been an exemplary enlargement tool. I didn’t see any changes.
- The entire suite can be run as a standalone application. I can’t imagine anyone doing that though.
- Perfect Layers seemed to only work with PSD files, not TIFF files. This means you have to create these using export in Lightroom. There is no automatic file generation from the plug-in. I can’t understand this since TIFF files now support layers. Maybe I am missing something.
- Perfect Effects is kinda cool. It obviously competes with NIK Color Effects Pro 4. I am biased towards the NIK software for this.
- Different pieces have inconsistent interfaces. I am use to coherent interfaces as produced by NIK software. Software exploration and experimentation is a total waste of time.
- The current online discounts end on December 10.
So maybe I am being unkind in my premature criticism. I will say this – I do not have the time to fiddle this week to learn how to use this stuff. To be fair, OnOne has hours of online tutorials. I sat through their presentations at WPPI and PMA and the demonstrators used each piece with fluidity. I will go the next step later this month and try my best to get onboard with OnOne stuff, but the upgrade did nothing to give me any immediate warm and fuzzies.
(One should observe all the reference tags to the Mamiya RB67. I have noticed this will increase search engine hits by 500%.)
