Introduction
Serif Photoplus X5 can be either downloaded from the Serif website or bought as a hard copy CD which adds a small shipping charge to the price. We downloaded from the website which is a straightforward process and only takes a few minutes. Installing is also a standard affair and if you've ever downloaded any other software, it goes through similar motions.
StartOnce everything is ready, double clicking on the icon launches the application. A window that looks spookily similar to Photoshop appears on the screen with a smaller welcome window offering lots of things to do before you start. In fact, it reminds us also of Corel Paintshop Pro because there's a “How To” section on the left side next to the picture editing tools. Any of these options can be clicked into for tutorials and samples. Serif Photoplus X5 is an upgrade from a previous version, so we'll concentrate mainly on what is new in this version.
There are plenty of new things to do in Serif Photoplus X5. Some of the more interesting features include PhotoPlus Organiser, Photo Projects, visible current layer, improved and faster blending as well as adjustments for vibrancy, saturation and contrast.
OrganiserThe Organiser opens in a different window and is well thought out. The left side is split into two tabs for organising and adding metadata. Pictures have to be imported first and it's not as straight forward as it looks. In fact we had some problems with it. At first the program wouldn't recognise any of our folders as valid import folders. We duly trawled the help sections and troubleshooting on the Serif website but ended up having to contact the Technical Department which works on a ticket system. We were contacted 1 day later with a response and they said that the import button is for retrieving pictures from a device. To import from a hard-drive, you have to choose the option Include Folder in Organiser located at the top of the file folder. Not the most intuitive description but we soon had loads of pictures loading up from our external hard-drive.
As we said previously, the left side of the window has a lot of tools similar to Photoshop or GIMP. The right side is just like Photoshop with a histogram, adjustments, layers, history and channels trays as well as others. Maybe it's because of the similarity in appearance that we kept trying to use all the Photoshop short cuts such as shift - control - E to flatten layers or shift - control - S to save as. Neither of which work. Not that it's detrimental but we were surprised to see that save as doesn't have any short-cut.
However, there are many short-cuts across the top of the window. There's a direct button to the Organiser as well as the Filter Gallery and the PhotoFix window which we really like. In this window there's a bunch of preset effects - 10 in total - for you to add to your pictures. A portrait is used as an example and we concur that this is the best type of picture to use simply due to the choice of filters on offer. To the right of the preview window, there's a whole host of custom additions you can make to your pictures and this is where Serif Photoplus X5 comes into its own.
The layout is similar to other tagging/editing systems so there's nothing new but compared to the filter gallery, it works like lightning. Adjustments can be made using typical features such as curves and sharpening (which is very accurate and sympathetic to the shot) as well as a few more creative features such as lens vignetting and chromatic aberration adjustment. It's a great window and we wager that when using this system, you'll do 90% of your work in there.
MaskingThere's also a mask area which is very precise and easy to use. It employs a similar green area to Vertus Fluid Mask which makes it easier to see what you've masked and what you need to do or remove. We like the Photo Filter area and think it's possible that it saves the program from simply becoming one of the other many tagging/editing programs on the market today.
Noise ReductionThere are plenty of dedicated programs that can deal with stuff such as noise reduction or HDR merging so it's worth knowing how good Serif Photoplus X5 is to see if it can standalone on a computer without having to stuff up your hard-drive with multiple programs. Noise reduction works very well. We prefer the layout to Photoshop because it has a larger default preview window but noise manipulation is very basic. If you want a comparison to the original, a split screen can be added by clicking the icon at the top of the page.
We pumped it up to 100 pixels to see how the program handled it at full power and although it did well at removing colour noise, it also removed the colour in the subjects eyes. Being able to set the colours to remove would be more advantageous. Performing the changes takes a few moments which isn't all that bad - it's literally a matter of seconds - but is noticeably slower than Adobe. But then it's a massive price difference and this is a key point to remember.
Removing the colour noise left us with salt and pepper noise and it's this lack of features that let's the noise removal area down. We couldn't get rid of this black & white noise which is a shame. We opted for a setting of about 25 pixels to get a decent balance of noise reduction and colour retention. Looking at other more used features such as sharpening, it has a similar range of options to Photoshop. You can add a standard amount of sharpening, sharpen more, sharpen edges and there's an unsharp mask. In standard, it looks OK depending on if you've reduced noise before or after the sharpen. We recommend before to get the best results.
Filter GalleryThere's loads to do in Serif Photoplus X5's filter gallery. It's designed to let you have some fun with your pictures. The picture you choose is loaded into the space on the left while the filters are set out on the right. The panel is divided into 2 sections with the filters on the top and fine tune adjustments can be made on the bottom. What filter you use will determine the sliders that appear on the bottom.
CroppingThere are the usual features there such as blur, noise and distort but there are also more interesting options such as edge and artistic. The artistic option will change the make-up of your picture according to the type you choose be it Impressionist, Expressionist, Munchist, Old Master, Watercolour or Pencil. Interestingly, Van Gogh has his own filter which is most probably down to his unique style. We had initial problems loading the filters in because the system ran out of memory which was frustrating when the rendering got all the way to the end only to be met by an error code. However, we closed the picture down, reloaded it and it worked fine.
Spot RepairThis overload of information could cause problems if you prefer to upload multiple files to work on. Just like the noise sliders, the art filter sliders are very basic. There are 2 on the Van Gogh option for Scale and Colour. It seems the scale slider adjusts the size of the paint strokes. We recommend starting at around 20 and playing around with it from there. This option seems to work best with subjects of solid colour such as postboxes or sunflowers.
Red-eye RemovalThe colour slider does make an adjustment but it's very slight unless you go from one end of the slider to the other. The lower end of the scale gives an effect more akin to the impressionist movement while the top end gives definite differences in colour through the strokes which gives a much stronger display of strokes, akin to Van Gogh's later works such as The Starry Night.
Serif Photoplus X5's art filters need a lot of processing power. Even after we shut down our other programs and only had X5 running, it took a long time just to preview the filter. It also has to load each amendment you make so just trying a filter on a picture can take around 5 minutes. The computer we tested this on has 2Gb of RAM. Interestingly, we found that if you don't wait for the changes to be made and simply click OK, it doesn't add them but still shows in the history bar as having the filter applied.
Conclusion
On the surface, Serif PhotoPlus X5 appears to be a very easy to use program and there are some elements that have been simplified in order to not confuse the layman. However, Serif have cleverly hidden the fine tuning away in the Photo Fix window so if you do need it, it's there.We can see how people who just want to play around with their pictures would be happy with the basic level of access though. So is this a program designed for the beginner? One would think so but the addition of the Photo Fix window and RAW file conversion suggests otherwise. That's something that serious photographers tend to get into, but it can also be there for potential photography enthusiasts to grow into.
There are some issues that need addressing. One way we test the intuitiveness of any equipment is by seeing how easy it is to use without the need for instructions or help functions. We had to contact Technical Help to deal with one problem because the online help didn't have the explanation.
The overall performance of Serif Photoplus X5 is very good. Loading a picture in using a drag and drop is ultra fast and changes made in the Photo Fix window were instant. We enjoyed using the art filters although the digital effects do take a lot of processing power. We can see that they'd look good printed onto some canvas, though we'd like it that once it's loaded in the filter, the amendments would be instantaneous. That way, we'd be less bothered waiting a while for the final processing. It would mean loading in the picture in low resolution which isn't a problem for other programs. The Watercolour example took around 5 minutes to load as a preview and a further 7 minutes to load it onto the final image after accepting it.
For around £70 Serif Photoplus X5 is certainly not a bad program, but bear in mind you can get Corel Paint Shop Pro for less than this and that's a full editing suite. While Serif Photoplus X5 does a lot, it seems to be marketed more as a tagging/import/editing suite.
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