Many digital imagers have found that the program they use the most is no longer Adobe Photoshop but Lightroom, or its Mac dedicated counterpart, Aperture. Color correction, cropping, spotting and printing tools can all be found in these two easy-to-learn and use programs. Even so, they do have their limitations. Simply put, if you need to add special effects to a photo, such as Liquify to apply a digital tummy tuck, then Photoshop is your tool. But most everything else can be done in Lightroom or Aperture.

Built into both of these programs, especially Lightroom, is the ability to use third-party plug-ins. One of the companies vying to be a leader in this arena is onOne Software located in Portland, Oregon. Among their plug-in solutions is what I believe to be the most exciting and useful plug-in for both Lightroom and Aperture, Perfect Layers 2. Perfect Layers 2 adds the power of Layers using tools similar to those found in Photoshop.

Perfect Layers 2 will import any changes or enhancements previously made in Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture, and allow you to blend multiple images together to create a perfect balance between foreground and background, composites of multiple images, enhance colors through Blending modes, swap skies and heads, in less time than it takes to perform the same task in Photoshop.

I do not believe there has ever been a portrait and wedding photographer who has not had at least one group photo ruined by one of the subjects blinking, or preferred the look of one subject over the same subject in another image. While this may have been more of a problem with film when the image could not be previewed until after development, it is still a problem for digital imagers.