Zoner Photo Studio X celebrates its first year and presents globally unique retouching brush

The Zoner Photo Studio X photo editing and managing software launches an autumn update that culminates one year from its first publication. The non-destructive Develop module has acquired a retouching tool whose abilities highly surpass other editors´ tools. The new adjustment layers in the Editor module make it easier for users to experiment with exposure, curves, and levels. ZPS X also enables full-fledged trimming of videos, which can be combined with photos and music.

Summarizing the last year, product manager Jan Kupcik says: “We have a year of subscriptions behind us, and so we can evaluate them. The ability to concentrate on just one program has untied our hands and enabled the developers to publish significant updates every three months. The volume of the new features we’ve presented in the last year would previously have taken us almost two years of development. I am proud to state in the name of the whole development team that we’ve upheld our promises connected with subscriptions, and we definitely don’t intend to slow down.”

The Photographer Controls Every Stroke

The breakthrough new feature in the autumn update is the unique retouching brush in the non-destructive Develop module. This brush is the first in the world to enable combining multiple masks as well as multiple strokes within one mask. Each individual stroke, meanwhile can be edited or deleted at any time without reducing the image’s quality. Automatic source region discovery also significantly helps to speed up users’ work.

Kupcik emphasizes the tool’s uniqueness: “Full control over brush strokes enables so much freedom of work that we’re leaping past even the giants of non-destructive editing such as Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. If you add to that our support for tablet pressure in the Develop module, which the competition lacks completely, then you’ve got a package you’re going to miss when you’re using any other software.” The arrival of the retouching tools thus makes the Develop module a single, comprehensive space where a photographer can handle the whole editing process.

Adjustment Layers Mean Easier Experimentation

The Editor module has also gained new features. Users can now apply basic edits to colors, overall exposure, and exposure levels and curves within separate adjustment layers that they can then edit at any time. Thus you don’t need to repeatedly duplicate individual layers, and you can try different editing variants more quickly and conveniently.

Video Editor with Support for Photo and Video Import

Creating vacation presentations and trimming event videos will be a snap with the new Video tool in the Create module. You can use it to trim videos, control their volume, and combine them with photos and music.

Tablet Controls—Now for Non-destructive Work Too

Pressure support for graphics tablets is back in ZPS. And since it’s built on the latest Windows Ink technology, it’s in much better condition. Graphic artists can now use pressure to control radius, opacity, density, and blurring—and for brushes, spacing as well. This function is available not only in the Editor, but also in Develop. And in fact ZPS X is the first in the world to enable pressure to control so many parameters in non-destructive editing.

Easier Printing of Documentation Photos

Business customers will especially appreciate the return of index prints to ZPS. The printing of portfolios, documentation photos, or just a page of captioned photo previews is now a matter of a few clicks. Index sheets (aka contact prints) now reside in the Create module, and offer more formatting possibilities than ever before. Users can choose from templates or set up image layouts, paper style, and accompanying text on their own.

Other new features in the autumn update include faster loading of folders with large picture counts, support for online-only files on OneDrive, and better display of brush blurring borders. Keyboard shortcuts have also been added for faster enabling and disabling of masks and for showing the mask only. ZPS X can newly read track logs that lack altitude data and RAWs from new cameras including the Nikon D7500 and the Canon 6D Mark II.

The New Features Are Free to Try for Everyone

Zoner Photo Studio X can be picked up as a yearly subscription for $49. During their subscriptions, users are entitled to ongoing program updates, exclusive guides and other materials, and also free priority technical support.

The full version of Zoner Photo Studio X can be downloaded from www.zoner.com and tried free for 7 days. Users for whom the trial version has already run out and who haven’t purchased ZPS X yet can try the new update free for 10 days. You can read more details on the autumn update here: https://www.zoner.com/en/zps-x-autumn-2017-update?fidl=2019-06-mag-en&utm_source=learn.zoner.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zps-x-celebrates-its-first-year&utm_content=text.