PhotoInstrument is a raster image editor for Windows aimed at retouching digital photos, especially portraits. Most of its work happens with brushes. You paint over the part of the picture that needs fixing, and the selected tool changes only that area. Alongside the retouching tools it handles layers, text, PSD files and batch resizing. PhotoInstrument is paid software with a free trial that has every function except saving.
Brush-based retouching
You apply each retouching tool in PhotoInstrument by painting. Brushes can be as large as 1000 pixels. You can change their size and hardness from the keyboard. The square bracket keys shrink or enlarge the brush, and the same keys with Shift make the edge softer or harder. A hard edge suits small, precise corrections, while a soft edge blends a change into the surrounding skin or background. You can zoom the image with the mouse wheel and move it by holding the Spacebar and dragging. This lets you do detailed work without menu trips.
The painting tools include:
- Liquify and Smudge for pushing pixels to reshape a face or body outline or soften a transition.
- Clone and Healing Brush for covering blemishes and marks with material copied from another part of the photo.
- Dodge/Burn for lightening or darkening painted areas.
- Blur, Sharpen and Colorize for local softening, crisper detail and color changes.
- Red Eye Removal for flash reflections in the eyes.
Skin smoothing with Glamour Skin
Glamour Skin is PhotoInstrument’s tool for smoothing faces without the flat, plastic look of a general blur. It uses two radius values, R1 and R2. Glamour Skin blurs only details whose size falls between those two values. Larger features and fine skin texture survive, while the tool evens out uneven patches in between. You set the two radii and paint over the skin, leaving the eyes and other areas that should stay sharp untouched.
Removing unwanted objects
Object Removal deletes something from a photo, such as a stranger standing behind a family group. You mark the object by brushing over it. After a few seconds of processing, PhotoInstrument fills the area with surrounding background. For smaller marks, the Clone and Healing tools give more manual control over what replaces them.
Corrections for the whole image
Not every change in PhotoInstrument is painted. Crop, Rotate and Scale change the frame and dimensions, while Brightness-Contrast and color level adjustments correct exposure and color balance. Denoise reduces grain in noisy shots, and Glow adds a soft light effect. Users often combine these global adjustments with brush tools on the same portrait. For example, they can denoise and sharpen a picture before smoothing the skin.
Layers, text and plugins
Layers let you place two or more images over each other in one composition, and the Text tool adds lettering on top. PhotoInstrument opens and edits Photoshop PSD files and accepts Photoshop-compatible plugins, which extend it with filters beyond its built-in set. You can open pictures by dragging them into the window or paste them from the clipboard.
Saving and batch resizing
You can save finished work as JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF and other common formats. PhotoInstrument can also write animated GIFs. Batch Resizing changes the size of many images in one operation. The program can use several processor cores and has an interface translated into more than 30 languages.
Trial and licenses
The trial version of PhotoInstrument works fully but cannot save results to a file; entering a registration key unlocks saving. A key is a one-time purchase with free upgrades. A Single license covers one computer and non-commercial use of the created images. A Home license covers up to three computers for private use. A Business license covers one computer in a business, academic or government setting.
