Pro 9 and Perfectly Clear 2 SE

[daveharney]

The Perfectly Clear documentation show presets for Beautify and Beautify+ but they never show in my list of presets. How do I get them to appear?

[JoeB]

The Perfectly Clear documentation show presets for Beautify and Beautify+ but they never show in my list of presets. How do I get them to appear?

You don't. Perfectly Clear SE is the Standard Edition (SE) that bundles with PSP. It is not the Pro edition. Only the Pro edition has the Beautify presets and it costs money. ALL of the stuff bundled with PSP as Bonus stuff is crippled in some way to encourage people to spend money on the Pro editions, except the KPT plugins, which are free for everyone.

[daveharney]

Thanks JoeB, the only reason I buy PSP is because it's relatively cheap - spending $149 more for Perfectly Clear is out of the question. Also, a big reason for buying the PSP X9 was because I thought I was going to get a feature like Beautify in Perfectly clear - I've go to learn to read the fine print!
In regular PSP9, is there a way to select just an area like a face and lighten it up or improve the skin tones? For example, if I have a photo that is otherwise OK except that a person's face is bit too dark.

[hartpaul]

Yep thats easy. BTW are you using Jasc PSP9 or Corel PSP X9 (19)

1.Load your image, making sure the layers palette is visible.
2. Duplicate the layer and turn the top layer off.
3. Make the bottom layer active and apply whatever means to lighten that image so that the face is right ( Levels, Curves, highlight mid tone shadow, Lighten Darken)
4. Make the upper layer visible and active.
5. Use an eraser brush with a low opacity -10 and soft - 10 and slowly erase the darker face on top so that the lighter face shows through. If you go too far you can right click brush to unerase.

[daveharney]

Thanks hartpaul,

I have Corel PaintShop Pro 19.0.1.8 x64

Your suggestion does work - thanks. I also found a quick method that may work in many cases (probably not as certain as your method).

1. Use the smart selection brush to select the face
2. Use Adjust -> Fill Flash and fiddle with the settings

This did work pretty well for the photo wanted to fix. But, definitely not as flexible as your method.

Thanks again.

[hartpaul]

That method is also good if you have two group photos and someone has eyes closed in one photo. You can position the eyes open photo beneath the eyes closed (change opacity of top photo ) and then erase away (erase in the eyes)

[daveharney]

Very creative! And the "eyes closed" in group photos happens all the time.