Picktorial 3 Review

June 6, 2017 | Tim Coleman | Software Reviews | Rating star Rating star Rating star Half rating star

Ease of Use

Picktorial 3

To get to grips with Picktorial 3, there are plenty of video tutorials that can be accessed via the company’s website, or its Youtube channel that is simply called Picktorial.

A clear selling point of Picktorial 3 is its simple interface and workflow. The reality is true to form. 

There is no switching between library and develop modules, all is found in a single workspace. The layout is clean and easy to view with dark grey background.

Click and drag an image folder onto the workspace and it is added to the folder section on the left, with no waiting time for import.  

Rather than catalogues, images remain located in the source folder on the desktop, with edits to raw files being added to the accompanying .xmp file. 

Images within the selected folder are displayed as thumbnails across the bottom of the workspace.  

Editing can commence almost straight away, with the editor panel found on the right. All the panels can be minimised when not in use, to further simplify the layout. 

At the top of the Primary Editor is the Histogram of the selected image. Like most raw editing software, Picktorial 3 can display the Clipping indicators on the histogram itself, plus as an Overlay on the image. The Histogram Clipping Overlay information is by default highlighted in blue.  

The primary editor to the right of the screen has four categories in its toolbar; Presets, Adjust, Info and History. Let’s go though each one.

In the Preset panel there are 35 different single-click effects, ranging from famous film presets like Ilford HP5 to HDR and Vintage 60’s. If you are looking for a quick edit, the preset panel is where to go! It is possible to import your own Presets too.

Next is the Adjust panel. Picktorial 3 focuses on the non-destructive editing that matters, with nine main categories; Crop & Rotate, Light, Colour, Curves, Retouch, Overlay, Frame, Watermark and Develop. 

Clicking on any of those nine adjustment categories expands and hides the options, and the edits made to an image in each category can be disabled or reset. 

There is a button to the bottom right of the image in the main viewer to compare the image before and after edits. 

A colour profile for the camera’s raw file is contained in the Develop category, with three options: Picktorial Standard, Picktorial Neutral and more. Standard is described by Picktorial 3’s creators as similar to the Adobe Lightroom colour preset, while Neutral is akin to the Capture One Pro colour preset. 

Only the basic image metadata can be found in the Info panel, which includes camera, lens and exposure modes as well as the original and cropped picture dimensions. I’d like to see more capture information included, such as focal length, ISO, aperture and shutter speed. 

Keywords can be manually added, along with copyright and creator details.

Finally there is the History panel which contains all the non-destructive edits made to an image. With the panel running the entire height of the workspace, there is plenty of room to contain numerous edits, which is great if you would like to go back several steps in the image editing history. 

Back to the Adjust panel, which is where most time is usually spent. 

Picktorial 3

Picktorial 3

One of Picktorial 3’s eight Adjust tools is Retouch, which is used to apply selective adjustments. The options for selective adjustments are tone, patch, smooth, sharpen, denoise and defocus.

Within each option there is a choice between brush, erase, linear gradient, radial gradient, fill and clear to apply selective adjustments. Most of the retouching tools can be manually tuned for size, feather, flow and edge, using the sliders.

To apply a retouch to all the image, such as sharpening, the fill option is available. To paint adjustments to select areas, the brush tool is there. These are ‘masks’, meaning they are not applied to the base image.  

There is no option for layers, so in some respects Picktorial 3 is a relatively basic editor like ACR. However, with both it is possible to make multiple selective adjustments to the same image. 

As for the Tone option in Retouch, there is blending modes, plus colour and luminosity masks, so some sophisticated edits can be made. 

To batch apply edits from a single image, one can copy adjustments and then select all other images in the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen and paste those adjustments. 

Once all the edits have been made, you can select all the edited images to export together, choose the destination folder (including Mac Photos) and then decide between saving in JPEG or TIFF format. There does not appear to be an option for batch renaming. 

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