Product Reviews

Monaco-based Binuscan is well-known for its scanner software and ColorPro workflow suite. PhotoRetouch Pro 1.0.2, its new photo editing package, isn't a jack-of-all-trades like Photoshop, but a dedicated tool for serious retouching and colour correction. It comes in a smart zip-up case containing the CD, reflective and transmissive calibration targets, and documentation.

An unindexed manual and non-existent on-screen help make the program seem less straightforward than it is. Following a painless installation, you meet a conventional and uncluttered interface providing a toolbox plus Options and Info palettes. Info constantly displays the cursor position and the pixel value under it in Lab, XYZ, HSV, RGB and CMYK. For more information, command-h brings up a scaleable histogram with a threshold slider and a clipping warning. Further analysis is offered by a bX-ray display mode, which highlights hidden artefacting such as Newton rings.

Top of the crops

Tools are mostly familiar, but subtly reworked. With SuperCrop, a typical photo scan, bordered and out of true at the edges, can be cropped and undistorted in one step. Rotating and rectangular marqueeing are aided by displayed axes. Multiple undo can be used on the tools and an Eraser removes the last operation.

The extras, however, are balanced by omissions. Bezier paths can be drawn, saved and applied as clipping paths more easily than in Photoshop, but not copied and pasted. Selections can be feathered and offset on the fly, but not saved, and there are no alpha channels or layers. The Vacuum Cleaner, intended to remove dust and scratches, can introduce artefacts unless used with care. Rulers and guides are absent. Annoyingly, two essential key shortcuts - zoom in and actual size - are allocated to the same key (+/=), which forces you to use the numeric keypad.

Filter tips

PhotoRetouch Pro's filters are referred to as 'Processes'. Some combine classic functions to avoid cumulative data loss, such as sharpen, blur and unsharp mask; contrast and input/output curves.

These are powerfully effective, especially RECO, an adaptive histogram stretcher (an improvement on Photoshop's Auto Levels) plus contrast, gamma, saturation and resolution-aware sharpening, which delivers startling instant corrections to dull scans. Other Processes tackle JPEG artefact removal and descreening, colour changing (at workstation quality levels) and defect detection.

Process dialog boxes show a large preview diptych, zoomable from 12% to

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200%, with before-and-after values tracked in the Info palette. Settings can be named and saved, although there's no scripting. All the Processes except JPEG Removal, can be used in 16-bit as well as 8-bit RGB. Cleverly, most Processes, even filter effects, can be painted directly on to images using the Paint Process tool. This brings a convenient and rewarding immediacy to complex retouch functions. Brush behaviour isn't all that controllable, however, and lacks pressure support.

CDC x4, a vector-based resizing algorithm, allows you to double the resolution of an image without the blotchiness of conventional interpolation. Although it can't work miracles, results do look more natural and are more printable.

True colours

Colour handling seems to be a work in progress, with many changes between versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2. The program operates in the device-independent XYZ colour space, while allowing images to be viewed in RGB or CMYK. Yet switching between modes can change values (not just appearance), and some filters aren't available in CMYK. ColorSync implementation is a straightforward choice of RGB, greyscale and CMYK working spaces plus a soft proofing profile, making management very easy.

Reassuringly, PhotoRetouch Pro largely agreed with Photoshop on the appearance of a given RGB file in a given ColorSync workflow. RGB to CMYK conversion is generally very good, and fully customisable, and you can save GCR, UCR, UCA, dot gain and ink weighting combinations as separation profiles.

We weren't so happy with some imported CMYK files, which appeared slightly washed-out and weren't fully resaturated when converted to RGB. The related Color Matching function remained undocumented at the time of testing.

A single menu item conceals a huge selling point: ICC profile generation. This is often portrayed as a black art, but here you just load two versions of an image - one as obtained from your input device, the other ideal - and PhotoRetouch Pro creates a profile map between the two. The image can be a calibration target or a suitable picture. You can match scanners, printers and display without calibration hardware. With some standalone profiling packages offering little more, this isn't to be sniffed at.

Speed ticket

Speed is cited as a strong point. PhotoRetouch Pro launches quickly, but other operations met rather than exceeded our expectations. Saving in the pyramidal bTIFF format tripled loading speed. It's worth noting that the only other file formats supported are DCS 1 and 2, EPS, JPEG, PICT, Scitex CT and TIFF.

In Mac OS X it suffered some instability and was reluctant to support Photoshop plug-ins. However, development is evidently in progress and we presume these problems will be patched.

PhotoRetouch Pro has useful and unique features, but not bucket loads of them. The idiosyncratic Binuscan approach to colour management can pay dividends for high-end users and far outclasses Photoshop, but lacks Adobe's safety in ubiquity. The package is well worth trying, and you can do so using the demo available from the Binuscan Web site.