Almost every editing software review begins with some reference to and it’s easy to see why when the Light room have dominated the market for well decades in the case. But while the chances of losing its status as in the foreseeable future are slim it’s safe to say that there are more than a handful of alternatives that are steadily eating away at its market share.
Suffice to say the next 10 years could see major shifts in the software photographers use to catalogue and edit their photos. But with so many options for processing images is there a place for software that’s designed to edit only landscape or location-based photography? It’s a difficult question to answer but Anthropics clearly believes there is with the release of the third installment of it’s Landscape Pro software.
Landscape Pro was first released with the promise of simplifying and speeding up outdoor and nature photography editing. And one of its USPs was that complex edits could be made simply by using sliders and easy-to-apply masks to different elements within images. The ability to replace a sky in just a few minutes remains one of Landscape Pro’s most compelling features and the latest version brings with it additional features that make complex edits quicker and easier than ever.
So in just three years we see the third version of this software and like most updates there are plenty of new features and functions to improve its capabilities. The editing process itself remains largely the same as it has always been so current users will be familiar with the editing process but it’s the inclusion of more advanced and popular controls that were absent in previous versions that makes Landscape Pro 3 an increasingly more rounded option for landscape photographers.
Landscape Pro 3 Studio Max – software options
At this stage it’s important to point out that there are three versions of Landscape Pro 3, each offering a sliding scale of features: these are Standard Studio and Studio Max. The version you choose will inevitably come down to the features you require for your editing work although you could also play a part in your decision.
So, in a nutshell, the Standard version costs £29.95 and allows you to edit JPEGs and TIFFs while taking advantage of intelligent landscape editing. Landscape Pro Studio costs £49.95, and in addition to the features offered by the Standard version allows you to edit raw files and will run as a smart filter. Studio Max costs £99.95 and offers all the aforementioned features alongside batch editing and a live where you can see how the edits you make are affecting your images. Batch processing may be useful to some photographers but since each landscape is essentially unique many may not find this a must-have feature.
The software is available as a free, so you can try before you buy, but in terms of general features and functionality the Studio Max version is the best option because the is an extremely useful tool when editing since you can ensure you’re not clipping shadows or blowing highlights.
Landscape is far one of the most popular genres of photography and Anthropic’s success with its Portrait Pro software for retouching portraits makes landscape-specific software an obvious way forward for the company. And the new features in Landscape Pro make it much improved over previous versions adding to an already well-rounded feature set.