May 24, 2019
LandscapePro Mac App REVIEW | Mac Sources
LandscapePro Mac App
9.7
Eye-catching landscape sky photos
Have you ever taken what you thought was going to be the best photo of your life only to notice that the sky is not what you thought it was going to look like? You might have had the sharpest portrait in a hard to get area and feel like it’s a waste because a dual sky is taking away from the beauty of the shot. No worries because LanscapePro has you covered. It’s an amazingly easy to use application that will allow you to simply pick from the style of skyscape you are looking for, mask out the original sky in your photo, and replace it.
DETAILS
LandscapePro is a dedicated landscape photo editor that is powered by artificial intelligence. In December 2018, developer Antropics Technology released the newest version (3.0) with an impressive amount of amenities for users. Some of the unique timesaving features include: advanced image recognition technology, atmosphere adjustment tools, object removal tools, new skies, overlay and logo facilities, sharpening and clarity tools, and improved straightening tools. The app is designed to make it easier for photographers to edit and enhance their landscape images by detecting features within their photos.
There are three different editions users can take advantage of: Standard, Studio, and Studio Max and the application cost starts at $39.95 (for new users — $29.95 upgrade price).
System Requirements: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, macOS 10.7 or later. A 1GHz processor or faster is recommend as well as at least 2GB of RAM.
IMPRESSIONS
I was very excited to try out LandscapePro because between Nick and Me, we have a lot of opportunities to capture images (me with an iPhone and him with a Canon 5D Mark IV) in different environments. The software is VERY easy to use and as is the case with most applications, you get out of it what you put into it. What I mean by that is some photos are going to be dead simple to edit while others may take a little more finesse.
The basic operation of the app is that you load a photo and label the different parts of it (i.e. sky, water, building, etc.) by dragging/dropping labels onto the different places in the image. LandscapePro will then analyze the photo and provide you with the opportunity to fine tune the magic selections. This process reminds me a lot of what you go through when you are trying to remove backgrounds from photos in Photoshop or Affinity Photo. After you have cleaned up the smart selections, you will then select where the horizon line should be in the photo. Then, you may choose how you want to edit the photo — by applying a preset or manually adjusting by using the Sliders in the Side Panel. The one-click presets are impressive. They will apply a certain look to your photo, which you can fine tune again to fit your photo. All of the adjusting happens with the aforementioned Sliders.
While the application does a remarkable job of recognizing the labeled elements, it’s not 100% perfect. I tried a few different photos as did Nick and I found that depending on how busy a photo is, the automatic selection feature can miss some things. For example, I tried to analyze a photo that had a clear horizon line but also had a bridge and barge included. You can see from the image I’ve included that there were some gaps in the magic selection tool. You can, of course, go in and select these areas, but I wanted to suggest that while this application can do a lot using it’s AI support, it’s not infallible and the user will still have to do some work.
One of the huge benefits to this software is being able to add backgrounds where there were none before. For example, the photo below features an airplane. The sky that is currently shown is not the original sky. It was a plain, gray, overcast sky with no clouds in it. So, Nick used LandscapePro to find the sky boundaries and add in some clouds as well as change the photo to be black & white.
One other thing I want to point out is that this app is fairly resource intensive. I am running a 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM. This should be enough to run the application, but I found that when I was analyzing photos and especially when I was applying presets that my computer slowed down and stuttered quite a bit until the process was completed. Nick, however, did not have any issues with operating the software. He has a 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro fully speced out. So, as a word of caution, make sure that your system can handle this application and that you have at least 2GB of RAM as is suggested by the developer.
Object replacements of this caliber used to only be possible in Photoshop and depending on the detail of your photo could take hours to do. LandscapePro lets you do it in just minutes. You will find a learning curve if you have never used this software before but that’s to be expected. I picked it up and started using it without following the instructions to see how hard it would be for someone. It was pretty painless. After my impatience test, I went back and read more on how to use the software to so I would have a better understanding and see what all I did without the knowledge of the software.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For some sticking with Photoshop will be the answer to replacing the sky in your photos but I think you should use every tool to your advantage to make the most stunning images possible. With LandscapePro Studio Max, the possibilities of outdoor photo editing are endless. The software offers dozens of presets to work with for skies, rocks, grass, trees, and more so that you can easily adjust your photos to have a final product you can show off.
In addition to it being a solid piece of software, LandscapePro includes several walkthrough tutorials and videos to get you started as well as a team of technicians in their support team. I think this is a must-have app for photographers — especially those who love to work outdoors. Since there are multiple options for license, there is no question that it’s a smart investment. Try it out with their free trial before you make your final decision.
For more details, visit Landscape Pro, Facebook, and Twitter.
Originally published at https://macsources.com on May 24, 2019.
