Portraits & Prints, the personal photo studio for Mac OS X from Econ Technologies, has been updated to version 1.2, adding several new features. New features include advanced cropping features, several photo scaling options, full AppleScript support and contrast control including the ability to apply enhancements to multiple images at once, Joseph Japes of Econ Technologies told MacCentral.
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“We’ve really done a lot with cropping,” he said. “Before it was done with a freehand type of tool. Now complete control over cropping is realized with two new features. Crops can now be drawn while maintaining aspect ratio using a new Constraint feature and the new Preset crop feature lets you create crops of any combination of size, position, aspect ratio and save them for future use on other photos. These features make it very easy to crop large batches of photos and maintain the aspect ratio, and they’re a big deal when printing photos.”
Portraits & Prints comes with some preset crops, but you can have the app “remember” a crop’s setting, such as location and size, Japes said. Photos can now be scaled for printing in three different ways. They can be auto-cropped, fitted proportionally or stretched to fit giving complete flexibility in printing photos, he added. The proportion feature also maintains aspect ratio, but if it’s off by a lot, Portraits and Prints will put white lines on the top or bottom of the image a la widescreen on a TV set.
A contrast setting has added to the enhancement tool set that already included brightness, sharpness and saturation. Portraits & Prints now has the ability to create settings using all four tools and then add them to a pop-up list for use anytime. You can create your own or use the set of commonly used enhancements already provided.
Portraits & Prints 1.2 adds the ability to tackle batch brightness and sharpness saturation changes. You can drag in a hundred photos and adjust all simultaneously, if you wish, Japes said. And you can save enhancements such as saturation and brightness as presets to use at a later date. Econ Technologies has included 11 presets.
“Plus, we’ve really opened up our AppleScript support,” Japes said. “We’ve included a tutorial to help show end users who might now otherwise use Apple’s scripting technology how useful it can be.”
Purchase Portraits & Prints 1.2 is a free update for registered users. For others, the cost is US$20. Its companion app, Portraits & Prints Template Maker, is $10. Both can be downloaded at the Econ Technologies Web sites. Free demo versions are also available.