Top Retouch Panel For Photoshop
Maria Mauri
This panel is geared toward providing the most useful tools in a retouching workflow and considering their history of creating other Photoshop tools to help with creativity and workflow, I decided to take a serious look at this panel to see if it is worthwhile as a photographer and retoucher.
To go into a little background about me, I consider myself a creative who loves to explore all the different ways Photoshop can bring different ideas to life! Although I am not a full-time professional, I have played with enough of the Infinite Tools products to know that their panels offer something for every level of photographer and retoucher. Knowing the kind of usefulness I have gained from their other products, I imagine the features will provide an even higher and different level of possibilities in the hands of a master photographer and retoucher.
Whether you are an amateur looking to improve your retouching or a professional wanting to perfect even the most minute of details, these layers will act almost as a second set of eyes to show inconsistencies in hue, saturation, and color shifts, or you can use one of the exposure layers to reveal any dust, dodge and burn inconsistencies, or problem areas that you may have missed on your own.
Along with the retouching layers, users have the ability to import their actions or layers that they use regularly, or even just a set of actions they want to use for a specific set of images. As an amateur retoucher, this was the most transformative for me.
I cannot tell you how much I love the user settings on the Retouching Panel. For the first time in my 6 years of pursuing photography on an amateur-to-professional level, I retouched and edited a set of images this week that looked like they were edited by a real professional thanks to the control and ability to personalize everything within my workflow.
While using this panel, it has become apparent to me that Pratik and Stefan have poured endless hours of thought into the different editing scenarios photographers and retouchers find themselves in. The export settings account for social media, client work, and printed work (and, in keeping with the rest of the panel, is fully customizable).
Presented, in all modesty, as The most advanced and powerful photoshop panel ever created, I could not resist reviewing the Retouch Pro Panel 2.0 for Photoshop distributed by NEXTUS SRL, an Italian company.
As they did on their previous creation Beautify Panel, the authors have chosen to go off the beaten track by displaying a very green flashy look that does not seem to me to have the best effect and does not correspond to the proposed standards by Adobe.
I had a rather disastrous experience when I bought the panel. It took me 48H and many messages to the support team to be able to download the panel. I am still waiting for the bonus files offered as part of the annual subscription. (400 HQ preset free).
Overall,because of the commercial promise that proudly announced The most advanced and powerful photoshop panel, I am not convinced by this new panel and if I had to recommend a dedicated beauty panel with many options, I would tend to recommend the excellent Pro Workflow X ($199).
I am really sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulty working with your Ultimate Retouch Panel! I can definitely help with this and have just popped you over an email to be able to get a little more information from you on what is happening on your side, and locate exactly where our results may be differing :).
and 2. Is there a way to use these panels with Affinity or is it only photoshop? Although I am an avid Adobe CC user, I am secretly praying that the good folks at Affinity give them a run for their money.
When it comes to making your editing workflow as efficient as possible, customization is key. Photoshop is great but doesn't allow for very advanced workspaces with custom scripts and actions. That's until you start using the Retouching Toolkit 3.0.
While the version two was already good, RAW.Exchange and Conny Wallstrom went not one step further, but one universe further with the latest version! Those of you who used Photoshop CS6 may remember of a small Adobe tool called Configurator. It'd let you create your own panels in Flash very easily. Well, the Retouching Toolkit 3.0 is just that, with a better-looking interface and already pre-written scripts for you to use.
The Toolkit is made of a Configurator app which will let you create your very own panels and also of panels that you create and integrate with Photoshop. The design of panels is quite straightforward: create a new panel, drag and drop buttons, and then drag and drop functions on each newly added button, save the panel and export it. The next time you'll run Photoshop, you'll find your panel in the Extension menu and you can reload the layout whenever you updated it in the Configurator app! As easy as that!
For those of you, who have custom actions or who like me create their own Photoshop scripts in Javascript and would love to integrate them in the panel, it's actually possible. All the actions created in Photoshop are visible in the Configurator so that you can link them to a button on your panel. If you use scripts and don't want to run them through actions, you can add them in the Scripts folder found in the Application data.
The level of customization of the Retouching Toolkit 3.0 is absolutely fantastic! Beginners may feel a bit lost at the beginning because of it, but what's great is that it comes with the layout and scripts of the Retouching Toolkit 2.0 as well. So when you start out, instead of trying to create everything from scratch, you could just customize the Toolkit 2.0.
I've been told by the guys at RAW.Exchange that additional modules would be made available in the future. No words about what they'll contain, what they'll offer more than the current ones. But the idea is that the Configurator is the base, and you can add on more to create the most powerful and efficient version of Photoshop you need through the custom panels.
One last detail regarding the features available, you can also map almost any Photoshop menu element to a button. So if you want to have a Print or Create New File button in your panel, you can do that. If you'd like to create a new Curve Layer, it's possible as well. You could push it as far as making a panel that as all the Photoshop features and scripts you need so that you wouldn't need anything but your custom panel, the Properties, Channel, and Layer windows open. Even the toolbar could become useless.
As a long time Retouching Toolkit 2.0 and Beauty Retouch panels user, and Photoshop script developer I found the new Retouching Toolkit 3.0 to be a masterpiece. I can't even imagine the hours Conny Wallstrom spent creating this fantastic tool.
The issue with the Toolkit 2.0 was that it had too many options that I wouldn't use or would use only for specific retouching jobs. I would have loved to be able to have a different panel according to the retouching job I was doing. With the new version, I can create up to nine different custom panels, and if I combine this with the power of Photoshop workspaces, I can have a user interface perfectly tailored for my needs for each job I have!
Being able to integrate your own actions and scripts is also a big plus! I love relying on panels, but often time it comes with the downside of still having to rely on actions and scripts for certain specific tasks. Having my very own scripts right in the panel makes it just that much better and more useful. The fewer panels I have opened on my interface, the more space I get for my image to be displayed, and the less distraction I have.
So all in all, it does help make my workflow more comfortable, faster, and more efficient. There is very little I would like to see improved but there are a couple of things that I'm sure will get better with time. For example, I'd love to see better modules with more options for luminosity masking and color grading. I'd also like to have the option to customize the user interface of each panel a bit more. The default UI looks great, but the titles are a bit small, so is the font size when I use my 4K display. It's not a big deal, but I doubt having the choice between different font-sizes would be a hard feature to add. The alternative in the meantime would be using an image by enabling the advanced settings I guess.
It's not as cheap as most panels that are available for $50-70 or less, but there is a reason: you can create as many panels as you'd like and they are designed for you by you! If you need the uttermost level of customization, the price won't be a problem. If you are just looking for a panel that creates Dodge and Burn curves for you, you may be better off relying on Photoshop Actions. Professional who spend a lot of time in front of their computer will appreciate the Retouching Toolkit 3.0, without a doubt.
Digital download sent straight to your inbox and available from your account anytime in the future if you need to get it again. Upgrades are included for free! Customer support and group membership included.
"I started with an open mind after other photographers had been raving. A couple of weeks in, I removed all other actions from my machines! Simple to use, superb variety and they do JUST what they say they will."
"I have used quite a few sets of actions but these are different. So very quick and easy to apply with no fuss, they save me so much editing time! Completely changed the way I look at my work"
4a15465005