Digital Gem Airbrush Pro

There is no Standard version of the Digital Gem Airbrush Pro Plug-in, and the price of $99.95 is the same as the other Pro versions. This plug-in is aimed more at portrait photographers, especially pros, who can spend many hours correcting skin blemishes and facial highlights that are unflattering. There are not many models with perfect skin, and with today's cameras and the need to get in close, especially for beauty shots, facial imperfections have to be smoothed out.

Using a fairly random but typical portrait shot I applied the default settings. The effect was immediately obvious. Most of the facial highlights and minor blemishes have immediately been neutralised. However, there is a good deal of control available, and with a live preview it’s easy to play and see what effect changes have. The controls are intuitive and if you struggle to understand what the different sliders and buttons do, there is an easy to follow guide to help you along. I have to say I was rather impressed with the result it gave on a full size 50mb file even on the default setting.



Obviously the amount of smoothing a face should have is a personal thing and so it’s possible to either increase or decrease the level of treatment that’s applied. I was happy with the default level and was amazed that things like the eyes, mouth and hair do not seem to be altered or significantly changed in the process.

It must also be said that there are other and cheaper programs that do the same sort of thing. Some allow you to actually alter the shape of the face slightly which the Kodak version does not, though these do require more input from the user. However, this is a great time saving program and if I was in need of such a plug-in for my everyday work and felt that this was going to save me time, which it undoubtedly does, then the $100 price tag is a small price to pay.

Below is a before and after of the full image followed by a crop, hopefully you are able to see the differences.


Before
After