Zoner Photo Studio X celebrates its first year and presents globally unique retouching brush
(Tampa, September 6th, 2017) Zoner Inc’s. popular photo editing/management software program Zoner Photo Studio X is celebrating its one-year anniversary in style with some exciting and unique new updates.
The program’s non-destructive Develop module has added a very versatile and more robust new retouching tool with new adjustment layers in the Editor module that make it easier for users to experiment with exposure, curves, and levels. ZPS X also now enables full-fledged trimming of videos, which can be combined with photos and music for a creative new way for users to tell more detailed stories with their stills/videos.
Summarizing the last year, Zoner product manager Jan Kupcik says: “We have a year of subscriptions behind us and we have been listening to their feedback. The ability to concentrate on just one program has untied our hands and enabled the developers to publish significant updates every three months. The volume of the new features we’ve presented in the last year would previously have taken us almost two years of development. I am proud to say, on behalf on the entire development team, that we have been listening closely to our subscribers and we definitely don’t intend to slow down on improving this program.”
The Photographer Controls Every Stroke
The breakthrough new feature in the autumn update is the aforementioned retouching brush in the non-destructive Develop module. This brush is now the first in the world to enable the combining of multiple masks as well as multiple strokes within one mask. Each individual stroke can be edited or deleted at any time without reducing image quality. Automatic source region discovery also significantly helps to speed up the editing process.
Kupcik emphasizes the tool’s uniqueness explaining, “Full control over brush strokes enables so much freedom of work that we’re leaping past even the giants of non-destructive editing such as Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. If you add to that our support for tablet pressure in the Develop module, which the competition lacks completely, then you’ve got a package you’re going to miss when you’re using any other software. The arrival of the retouching tools thus makes the Develop module a single, comprehensive space where a photographer can handle the whole editing process.”
Adjustment Layers Mean Easier Experimentation
The Editor module has also added new features. Users can now apply basic edits to colors, overall exposure, and exposure levels/curves within separate adjustment layers that they can then edit at any time. Thus, it is no longer necessary to repeatedly duplicate individual layers and users can try different editing variants more quickly and conveniently.
Video Editor with Support for Photo and Video Import
Creating vacation presentations and trimming event videos is now a snap with the new Video tool in the Create module. You can use it to quickly and easily trim videos, control their volume and combine them with photos and music, creating memorable “story telling” clips.
Tablet Controls—Now for Non-destructive Work Too
Pressure support for graphics tablets is back in ZPS. And since it’s built on the latest Windows Ink technology, it’s much more functional. Graphic artists can now use pressure to control radius, opacity, density and blurring—and for brushes and spacing as well. This function is available not only in the Editor, but also in Develop. And to all this another first for ZPS X – as the program now enables pressure to control so many parameters in non-destructive editing.
Easier Printing of Documentation Photos
Business customers will especially appreciate the return of index prints to ZPS. The printing of portfolios, documentation photos, or just a page of captioned photo previews can now be accomplished in a matter of a few clicks. Index sheets (aka contact prints) now reside in the Create module and offer more formatting possibilities than ever before. Users can choose from templates or set up image layouts, paper style, and accompanying text on their own.
Other new features in the autumn update include faster loading of folders with large picture counts, support for online-only files on OneDrive and better display of brush blurring borders. Keyboard shortcuts have also been added for faster enabling and disabling of masks and for showing the mask only. ZPS X can newly read track logs that lack altitude data and RAWs from new cameras including the Nikon D7500 and the Canon 6D Mark II.
The New Features Are Free to Try for Everyone
Zoner Photo Studio X can be picked up as a yearly subscription for $49. During the subscription, users are entitled to ongoing program updates, exclusive guides and other materials as well as free priority technical support.
The full version of Zoner Photo Studio X can be downloaded from www.zoner.com and sampled free for 30 days. Users for whom the trial version has already run out and who haven’t yet purchased ZPS X can try the new update free for 10 days. You can read more details on the autumn update here: https://www.zoner.com/en/zps-x-autumn-2017-update.
Zoner, Inc. develops and markets Zoner Photo Studio and also operates Zonerama.com, an unlimited and free online photo gallery service. Zoner’s corporate offices are located in Tampa, Japan, Germany and the Czech Republic. The company was launched back in 1993 by five fresh-faced, photography-loving graduates.