articles/Nature/athentechperfectlyclear-page1

Athentech Perfectly Clear - part 1 of 1 2

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We first saw this software at Focus, where we were provided with a fairly convincing demonstration of its capabilities. The most striking feature was that it dealt with slightly 'off' images in quite a subtle way but definitely improved them overall.

All images provided by cameras are available as RGB data (in one form or another, some of which look nothing like RGB!) so ultimately anybody manipulating an image has the same field of play. Nothing that you can do in a bespoke software cannot be mimicked in Photoshop providing the user has sufficient skill.

This is the niche that software such as Perfectly Clear exploits - onestop click solutions to common problems. This reviewer, then, is always sceptical about the inflated claims made by the makers of the products and Athentech is no different. Indeed Authentic risk my ire by rubbishing 'competitors' and showing appalling results compared alongside their own. Such tactics are an invite to repeat the comparisons and sometimes the results are painful! So it was that the awkward squad set to work.

Despite the misgivings, we were actually impressed by the results Perfectly Clear obtained on portraits with just a click of the mouse. Our example, taken from their website was processed by a number of methods and the results are compared in the composite image here. This deals with the age-old problem of certain skin complexions overreddening when shot with a digital camera.

We removed the effect using Perfectly Clear and then used an HSB Adjustment layer to reproduce the near-identical result in Photoshop. Perfectly Clear did an equally good job with a lot less fuss and for good measure repeated the process on a shot in which a facial tone was quite marked with red patches of skin.

For the record, the overred skin tones were showing Lab co-ordinates of a:30/b:26 and were shifted to a:25/b:25.

• Athentech Perfectly Clear page 1
  
• Athentech Perfectly Clear page 2
  

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