The 2020 Autumn Update: Local Color Edits, an Improved Create Module, Variants, and Much More

And it’s here! We’ve just released the 2020 autumn update to Zoner Photo Studio X. Besides a number of new features, it also offers many improvements to existing ones. In this article we’ll briefly summarize all the important things you can look forward to. Because there really are a lot of them. Everything you’ve wanted to know about the autumn update but were afraid to ask, you’ll learn riiight… now!

The autumn update amounts to the third update to Zoner Photo Studio X for this year. The first one added revolutionary tools for working with colors, while the second brought improvements to the popular photo books. This new update supplements those two and refines them to perfection. And naturally it brings in lots of other new features as well.

Develop’s Local Editing Now Supports Color Shift and Curves

Many of you were clamoring for these particular improvements. Editing with Color Shift throughout a picture is great, but why not go further? We asked ourselves that too. So now with our tools for local color editing, you gain absolute control over the colors in your photos. And when you need to fine-tune the results even further, remember you can now locally adjust the Tone Curve too.

How Does It Work? We’ve incorporated local Color Shift and Tone Curve edits into the Filter Brush (B) and the Radial (R) and Gradient (G) filters. Besides settings for the more usual parameters that you’re already used to for these tools, you can now also locally adjust things like colors and local contrast via the Tone Curve. Can work with colors even get any smarter?

One Photo, Different Editing Variants

Color, or black and white? These colors or those colors? To be indecisive is human, and we photographers are twice as indecisive as that. And that’s why ZPS X newly has Variants. 

You can create these virtual copies of photos, make different edits to them, and then decide which one is the best. No more copying the source photo and wasting disk space! You can create up to 250 Variants of your non-destructive edits to one photo. That ought to be enough!

Configurable preset strength

Great news for everyone who likes to use our popular presets or create their own. Now you can easily set the intensity of how a preset affects a photo. Do you have some favorite presets that feel a bit too striking, and so you don’t use them as often as you’d like? Like your edits low-key? You’ll definitely appreciate configurable preset intensity.

Get to Know the New Luma Curve

We’ve just added Luma Curve editing to the Develop module. How can it be more helpful than the traditional RGB curve? Through how it doesn’t change the saturation of individual colors—just individual pixels’ lightness. Because with the RGB curve, you can sometimes end up altering colors too—which you usually don’t want. With the new Luma curve, you can consider that problem solved.

Auto-straightening

A few very smart people from Zoner and the nearby Brno University of Technology put their eggheads together and dreamed up auto-straightening for your pictures. So the straightening tool can now automatically recognize key lines and straighten a photo based on them. The intelligent mode can also assess on its own how much straightening would be “too much” and would unnaturally distort the objects in a photo, and then adapt the straightening to that.

Better Tools for Photo Products

We’ve listened to your wishes and worked hard on the Create module. We have made it easier to create individual photo products and unified the controls across the whole module. For example, we’ve made it easier to add/drag whole batches of photos at once up from the Filmstrip, which will save you lots of time. 

You’ll also definitely enjoy how we’ve expanded the reach of the popular Page Layouts from just photo books into other photo products too. That will help you get your creations in Create looking great and tasteful too. You can also newly add new empty page spreads in photo books and replace one with another with just a click and a drag.

One important improvement is that you can now order multiple photo products at once (or the same one several times). That saves you clicks—and shipping fees. We believe you’ll come to love this little added feature.

Icing on Top? You Bet!

This seemingly minor feature in the autumn update shouldn’t pass unnoticed. You can now tell at first sight what edits you’ve already made to a photo. In the Side Panel on the right, tools you’ve already used on a given picture are marked with a blue dot. That helps you keep your bearings and work faster. When you come back to a photo after a long time away from it, you can just check the Side Panel to see “where you are.”

Now you can jump into trying all the new things your Zoner Photo Studio X can do. What do you say to the changes? Don’t hesitate to let us know how you like the latest update in your comments on this article or on our Facebook page.