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PhotoDirector offers a comprehensive set of presets for commonly used corrections like its Blue Skies used here

CyberLink'southward drove of editing tools have long been an culling to Adobe's Artistic Deject, but at present the company has made the comparison more clear by wrapping them into a unified offering branded Director Suite 365. While even so promoting the private purchase of its applications, CyberLink has taken a page out of Adobe's book past offering a "365 Subscription" option that provides some exclusive content — along with production updates and plenty of Plugins, Style Packs, and fifty-fifty some 3rd-party add together-ins.

PhotoDirector: Y'all'll Honey It or Hate It

If you're an Adobe user wondering most whether PhotoDirector has something to offer, imagine a single application that took the modules of Lightroom, added some of the Guided Edits features of Photoshop Elements, and then extended itself through most of the features found in Photoshop CC. The result is an all-in-one, value-priced alternative for your full image editing needs. The Library module is not as full-featured as the one in Lightroom, just it offers typical features like tagging and search, plus the increasingly common option to enable facial recognition.

To use PhotoDirector effectively, though, you really need to go into the spirit of how its modules are designed to work together. That tin be frustrating, at least at kickoff. For example, to crop and resize an image I had to use the Crop tool from the Global Adjustments (which are not-destructive a la Lightroom), then resize when I exported it (this is a task I need to do all the time when preparing images for various websites like ExtremeTech). In Photoshop this is achieved with a simple pixel-based preset for the Crop tool.

What'southward New In PhotoDirector x

Speaking of Photoshop, i of the biggest updates in PhotoDirector 10 is to help it match the Layers capability found in Photoshop CC. CyberLink has added Adjustment Layers, Clipping Masks, and Layer Groups. Tethered shooting has also been added, which should exist a big win for many who work in a studio — a key market for CyberLink. On the snazzier side are some AI-powered Manner features, starting with a Style plug-in. To accompany that there are various Style Packs.

Turn video motion into a multi-exposure shot using PhotoDirector 10

PhotoDirector as well adds a Dehaze command, in line with other popular editing packages. On the more than-innovative side, it tin likewise extract a series of frames from a video and turn them into a multi-exposure still frame. I find that especially interesting since one issue with video is that it isn't as piece of cake to view or share every bit a still image, and so a way to capture motion in a single image is intriguing. Turning that around, y'all tin too create Move Stills from a video clip, by highlighting a portion y'all desire to move and keeping the rest frozen.

PowerDirector: the Power of Premiere Pro With an Elements-Like Arroyo

For anyone who doesn't edit videos for a living, Premiere Pro is a daunting — and expensive — application. It is really designed for creative professionals who specialize in video. Elements, and soon Project Rush, are designed to provide simplified versions with fewer features. But CyberLink has instead decided to provide a full-on competitor, sporting a simplified interface, to Premiere Pro (and Final Cut) with its PowerDirector product.

PowerDirector's UI will look familiar to users of other video editors, but you'll need to adapt to the way its workflow is structured

PowerDirector's UI will look familiar to users of other video editors, but you'll need to adapt to the way its workflow is structured.

Similar to Premiere Pro, PowerDirector uses a step-through-workspaces workflow, although they are more similar the well-defined modules of Lightroom than the "soft" group of Premiere Pro'due south workspaces. If you'll be recording live, you tin can first with Capture; otherwise, you can jump correct into the Edit module to import and procedure your clips, then caput to Produce for rendering output. For those notwithstanding called-for DVDs, there is a final module called Create Disc. To work with a specific clip when editing you select the clip and then either Ready/Enhance to bring up a palette of adjustments, or Tools for sure built-in and plug-in tools.

Only as with PhotoDirector, your enthusiasm for PowerDirector may accept a lot to exercise with how ingrained you are into your current toolset. As an example, with a fair corporeality of attempt I've put together a drone video workflow that uses D-Log footage, an input LUT, racket removal with the Swell Video plugin, and custom presets for Neat Video developed by TheFilmPoets. Since I oft just want to process a single clip, like a demo for an article, the overhead of doing this in Premiere Pro is abrasive, simply something I've learned to alive with. PowerDirector makes the overall job simpler just doesn't back up the Neat Video plug-in. PowerDirector has built-in video noise reduction, but nothing as powerful as Neat Video. And then if you're put a lot of endeavour into a complex workflow in Premiere Pro or Final Cut, you'll have to alive with some changes. (At first, I idea it didn't support all of my LUTs, but it turns out they just needed to have shorter filenames).

Equally a brief experiment I took an aerial sample clip I shot in D-Log with the Mavic Pro and candy information technology with PowerDirector 17. I started with the default settings, added an input LUT, and enabled Video Stabilization, Noise Reduction, and Edge Enhancement. The video beneath shows the original footage in the upper right overlaid onto the processed footage. As an aside, PowerDirector 17 makes it really easy to do cool overlays and layouts with your video. I think I'll exist doing more of that in the future. The output video framing is unlike because of the application of the digital stabilization (pretty typical). I started with the default stabilization and wasn't that impressed, so this version uses the Enhanced version (slower rendering):

What's New in PowerDirector 17

I of the coolest new features in PowerDirector 17 is a multi-camera editing way. I haven't used it personally, but the company's demo shows a powerful system for creating video synchronizing, combining, and color matching clips shot from various perspectives of the same scene. In one case that would only accept been needed by studios, only now that video blogging is becoming more sophisticated and often uses multiple cameras, I suspect information technology will find a broad audience. Chroma key masking has also been enhanced to permit you to select multiple colour ranges for the mask in cases where the screen isn't perfect.

I also really similar the thought of its new Nested Projects feature. Rather than creating a consummate mess of a stack on a single projection timeline, you can work on one slice of a project and and so contain it into a parent projection. Beyond those headline features, PowerDirector 17 has quite a few other interesting upgrades including integrated audio editing:

PowerDirector 17 is chock full of new features for just about every video editing use case

PowerDirector 17 is chock full of new features for just about every video-editing use case.

There Is Lots More than

I've simply been able to scratch the surface of the features in CyberLink's new Photo and Video editors, and haven't fifty-fifty touched their upgraded Audio Director product. If you're a current user of the tools, there are quite a few reasons to upgrade. If you're looking around for a new toolset, the Director Suite is certainly worth putting on your evaluation list.

Managing director Suite 365 Subscription and Deject

While Adobe's Photo plan is priced very aggressively, anyone needing to add video or sound editors to the bundle is in for a large price tag for the whole Creative Cloud suite. CyberLink has priced Managing director Suite 365 equally a value-priced alternative. A subscription for all four of its editing apps and add-ons is $130 if y'all pay annually (or $30 for a calendar month). The subscription also includes 100GB of storage in CyberLink's new Cloud.

For those who go on to smoke that Adobe has cornered them into a subscription model, yous tin can even so buy the applications you need separately. PowerDirector 17 Ultimate is $130, and Ultra is $100. PhotoDirector 10 Ultra is $100, while ColorDirector 7 and AudioDirector 9 are each $130. Clearly, for anyone using more than than one of the applications and who wants to stay at all electric current, CyberLink has made a 365 subscription the appealing alternative.

At present Read: Hands On With Photoshop, Premiere Elements 2022, Adobe Unveils Project Rush, and DJI Launches Drool-Worthy Mavic 2 Pro.