OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 7 is a rather fun program.  Coupled with the book by Nicole Young and training videos from OnOne University, some of the power of the software becomes apparent.

First of all, I am really a novice with this program, and, indeed, with many more sophisticated programs.  Photoshop eludes me, and I am okay with Lightroom, but only because it is pretty easy to putz through.  Layers, though, are another story.  I get the concept of layers quite readily, but how to produce something using layers is the challenge.  This is one reason why I decided to pick up Perfect Photo Suite 7 – it isn’t over the top with what can be done, but provides a really solid set of tools for neophytes.

I began the book at the beginning, reading the first chapter, Getting Started, and the second one, Perfect Layers. I also watched a video or two about layers, and the results are below. For each, I took two pictures, free from the internet and from my own portfolio. I found skies, and put them into the other image by brushing out or in, to show or hide, the underlying layer. Kind of confusing at first, but I got the hang of it.

The above two images worked out okay, and I played a bit with different available in the Layers module. I tried the different “bugs” – they look great, but I need to practice more with them. There are some limitations that I can see, but I expect with experimentation, the bugs, with multiple layers, can be quite powerful.

This image uses Layers, and then the addtion of Effects. If you look closely, you can see that my erasure of the sky was not very good – there are streaks in the clouds! Important point.

So far, I think that Perfect Photo Suite 7 will be very useful. Certainly easier than Photoshop, and probably an excellent starting point. Nicole’s book is clear, but I think some samples of how something is done, with images to use and modify in a step-by-step sequence, would add to the overall strength of her book, and certainly aid the new user in grasping how things are done.