Sagelight Image Editor

[hamradio]

At the moment if you buy Sagelight Image Editor you are getting a lifetime license which is defined at the following link...

Lifetime License Forum Question/Answer by Rob

It is turning into a great product...even more now that Adobe has switched to the cloud for their products.  So if you haven't checked it out you might want to check it out and if you have checked it out before it might be worth looking at again to see if it will meet your needs.

http://www.sagelighteditor.com/

Note: I won a lifetime license a couple years ago or so on DonationCoder and have used it for my pictures when needed and I am not affiliated in any way with the developer.

[Lutz_]

BTW, the new noise removal tools in sagelight provides first class quality results!
http://sagelighteditor.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/sagelight-noise-reduction-beta-release/
The lens blur tools are great as well.

No, sagelight  is not a competitor to photoshop or photoline - after all you can open only one image at a time (as one example for some of the restrictions - Sagelight is not a universal image manipulator).  
However, for an editor that is focused on realistic photo enhancement it is great and it is a bargain.   Sagelight provides an entire image editor at the price of a single purpose plug-in.

[oblivion]

I get more impressed with Sagelight the more I use it. The HDR tools -- which effectively allow you to simulate HDR effects from a single Jpeg -- are quietly impressive, a definite +1 on the noise reduction tools, the Bokeh thing can also produce stunning results and it can use Photoshop-compatible plugins. What's not to like?

I've only recently discovered a workflow that's my current new toy: the undo brush, used in reverse. For instance, increase the saturation of the entire image to a level that you envisage for just (say) a flower, use the undo brush, use the feature within it to fill the entire workspace with the image state before you increased the saturation, then use the brush to remove the undo from the flower: effect, a supersaturated flower against a normal background.

Most "serious" image editors make you think in layers and Sagelight is different: it took me a long time to understand how to work with it and get the sort of results I could see (from the examples on the website) were possible, compared to the other image editors I use. There are still things I wouldn't use it for, but I've reached the point where I won't do ANYTHING with a photo before I've taken it through Sagelight at least once.

I also have no affiliation with the software or its author beyond the normal loyalty you might expect of any happy user.

[tomos]

BTW, the new noise removal tools in sagelight provides first class quality results!
http://sagelighteditor.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/sagelight-noise-reduction-beta-release/

that's great news! downloading, thanks



Re the HDR,
I like his approach (mostly more naturalistic - see his blog post about it).

[tomos]

^noise reduction is in the latest update (not that new I think). The about window now says: 4.4h (b)

It works very well !
It really is a very impressive programme in terms of capability and quality of work done (5 stars)

But some things still do my head in
I cant zoom in any familiar manner, (have to use a 'navigation pane'); cant pan normally (again, navigation pane). A navigation pane can have advantages (say moving from detail view in one area to same zoom of a completely different area), but as the only method to zoom & pan, it's a real challenge to revert to such a primitive method.
It doesnt recognise photo orientation here - if I rotate it, I can no longer use the split pane to show original in comparision with modified. I should/will make a post in the Sagelight forums about these...

[4wd]

A couple of things that annoy me about it are:
1) The window is maximised - and that's it.  Other than minimise to the Taskbar I can't resize it.
2) No drag and drop of images onto it to load up a new one.  Having to use a menu or file requesters gets very annoying, very fast.

[tomos]

A couple of things that annoy me about it are:
1) The window is maximised - and that's it.  Other than minimise to the Taskbar I can't resize it.
2) No drag and drop of images onto it to load up a new one.  Having to use a menu or file requesters gets very annoying, very fast.

He's been very focused on getting really good noise reduction and other capabilities. He's a bit of a perfectionist which can be a pro in terms of quality, but a bit of a con if you're waiting for other improvements. Hopefully for the next version he'll look at those interface things.