Piranesi 2010 Pro review

Piranesi’s Cutout tool takes things one step further, enabling the import and placement of bitmap files and 3D models to quickly populate any scene, complete with accurate shadows. As well as a range of ready-to-use cutouts, Piranesi 2010 lets you download models from SketchUp’s excellent 3D Warehouse, automatically resizing and masking the cutouts, depending on where you place them. The end result is displayed on-the-fly as you move your cursor around the image.

Using cutouts lets you quickly turn your images into 3D photomontages, which explains why the lack of layer support has never seemed a major issue. Nonetheless Piranesi 2010 Pro does add that ability in this version, offering a Layer Manager panel where layers can be created, reordered, deleted, duplicated, hidden and merged; the blend mode and opacity can be adjusted too. Working like this you can non-destructively build up your image from separate layers: one each for shadows, outlines, textures and cutouts, for example.

This sort of layer handling will sound familiar to users of traditional bitmap editors such as Photoshop, but typically Piranesi also adds its own creative twist. Rather than limiting you to working with the pixels on the currently selected layer, Piranesi Pro 2010 treats each new layer as the sum of all visible underlying layers. This means, once you’ve built up your core image, you can then quickly explore radically different artistic variations of it.

The use of layers does add greatly to memory requirements, however, especially when dealing with large images. Luckily, Piranesi 2010 Pro adds 64-bit support this time around, so it should be less of an issue for those owning powerful modern PCs.

The introduction of layers is Piranesi Pro 2010’s undoubted highlight, but the new release adds one more major advance with support for 3D output (see screenshot above. To create the 3D illusion you need to split your image into stereo channels representing the slightly different views of a scene that each eye would see. Because the EPix image contains depth information, Piranesi is ideal for this and lets you experiment with settings such as angle and focus depth to achieve the best results.

For some users this new capability might seem little more than a gimmick, but for others the ability to quickly convert their 3D renders for true 3D viewing via cheap anaglyph glasses will be reason enough to buy Piranesi 2010 Pro. It’s also a nice demonstration of how Piranesi’s unique approach unlocks unique power.

Author: Tom Arah