AKVIS MakeUp 1

Introduction

AKVIS MakeUp 1 is an Adobe Photoshop-compatible plug-in that enables you to create professional-looking portraits from your photos by smoothening small defects on the skin, thus making it look flawless and beautiful. With this plug-in, you can even batch process your photographs although you do get better results working with individual photos.

MakeUp is from AKVIS, a company based in Russia that specializes in graphic programs. Apart from Makeup, AKVIS also creates other Photoshop-compatible plug-ins like Retoucher, Chameleon, MultiBrush, Sketch, Enhancer, Decorator, Coloriage, etc.

You can download a free 10-day trial version of MakeUp from the AKVIS site.

My contact at AKVIS for this review was Kat Kharina. Thank you, Kat.

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How To Use

Follow these steps to use AKVIS MakeUp:

1. Open an image you want to use inside Adobe Photoshop or a similar program.
2. Choose the Filter | AKVIS | MakeUp option, as shown in Figure 1, below.
3. 
   Figure 1: MakeUp
3. Doing so opens the selected image within the MakeUp interface, as you can see in Figure 2, below.
4. 
   Figure 2: AKVIS MakeUp interface
5. The interface is explained below, each area corresponds to an area highlighted in Figure 2:

A. Buttons

6. The upper part of the interface is the Control Panel with buttons located on both the left and right sides. Options are available to undo/redo, access Express and Advanced workspace modes, to start processing the image, and to apply the result to the image. There are also buttons to launch the information dialog, help files, open the AKVIS MakeUp home page, and the Preferences dialog box.
7. In the Express mode, the plug-in interface is very simplified, since it has minimal set of parameters. In the Advanced mode, the full functionality of the plug-in is available.

B. Preview

8. Preview has two tabs: Before and After, which shows previews of both the original and changed images.

C. Tools

9. Here you get three sets of tools which are:

Preview Window

10. Preview Window (a dotted frame) displays instant results of effects applied within the dotted frame area (refer to Figure 1, above).

Mask Correction Tools

11. Mask Correction Tools include Keep Area, Drop Area, and Eraser.

Post-Processing Tools

12. Post-Processing Tools include the History Brush and Spot Remover
13. There are some other tools such as Hand and Zoom. These let you alter the viewing area of the open image.

D. Navigator

14. On the top right, you'll find the Navigator. This also lets you alter which area of the image is shown in the Preview pane.

E. Effects

15. This part of the interface provides two tabs: Smoothing and Correction.

Smoothing tab

16. Within this tab you'll get parameters to improve an image by eliminating small defects (see Figure 3).
17. 
    Figure 3: Smoothing tab parameters

Correction tab

18. This tab will provide you with additional image processing parameters, as shown in Figure 4, below.
19. 
    Figure 4: Correction tab parameters
Note: The visibility of the tabs and their content is totally based on the made you have selected. For example the Express workspace mode will show only Smoothing tab with limited parameters.

F. Presets

20. Presets allows you to save altered parameters which can be used in the future.
4. Play with the parameters within both the tabs, and when you'll get the result you want apply the changes within the plug-in by pressing the Run button.
5. 
5. This applies the effect and creates a preview of the changed image in the After tab, as shown in Figure 5, below.
6. 
   Figure 5: Preview the changes
6. Once you’re done, apply the result to the image by pressing the Apply button to return to the image editor.
7. 
   

Here are some Before and After samples:

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Specifications

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