Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

Retina
Chapter 9 ■ Quick-Fix Software 117
Vendor: XtraSens
Purpose: 22 smart filters and functions to maximize perceived contrast, brightness, sharpness,
depth, and resolution
Description
Based on the latest neuronal technology, Retina is a set of 22 adaptive filters for
Photoshop to maximize perceived contrast, brightness, sharpness, depth, and resolution.
It makes an astonishing difference to photographs that lack punch, giving them
all the punch they need. The effect is like removing a veil, or cleaning a coat of varnish
from a painting, as the “before/after” shots on the vendor’s Website amply demonstrate.
Retina has five modes, called Automatic, Portrait, Landscape, Macro, and Advanced, plus
Batch mode. Automatic mode is the main user interface for the software, providing a singleclick
enhancement option, whereas the others are “second level” interfaces with controls.
The Advanced mode control panel gives access to all the different functions, for texture,
lighting, artifact reduction, color, and perceptual/absolute tonal/light functions. There
are also command buttons for refresh, zoom, profile selection, reload, and save.
The main retina function, itself called Retina, modifies local contrast pixel by pixel, while
at the same time maintaining contrast in large areas of the picture. This makes a dramatic
change, improving perceived sharpness, accentuating textures without increasing noise,
and giving an apparent increase in depth. The other advanced functions—Digital Flash,
Auto Color, and Perceptual—all make a contribution to the impact of the image.
Retina supports 8- and 16-bit RGB color, grayscale, and CMYK, but not multichannel,
index color, or Lab color.
Comments
Retina is a rare tool that deserves to be better known. It is a genuinely intelligent product,
based on research into human perception. To every image it imparts a super-real
effect, revealing detail in shadows and highlights automatically while sharpening the
picture as well. Although it is not at all flattering to portraits, which tends to rule out a
large section of the market, for buildings, landscapes, and especially underwater photography
it is truly outstanding.
Version: Retina 1.03 (2008)
Plugs into: Photoshop 7, CS, CS2, and CS3; Photoshop Elements
OS: Windows XP only
RAM: 256MB
Supported file formats: Major RGB formats
Price level: Retina lite $75, Retina $100 (both approx.)