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AKVIS ENHANSER 3.0
By Bill Colotelo
March 2006
Member of SCUG

www.akvis.com for Windows and Macintosh
4.18 MB Download
10 Day free Trial, $69 US
E-Mail of Companysupport@akvis.com

System Requirements For Windows
Pentium III (and more), RAM at least 256 MB, 15 MB of free space on the hard disk.
For Macintosh: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), PowerPC G3 and above.

General Description: Rather than trying to explain what AKVIS Enhancer does or tries to do, I have included the Company's explanation as provided in their web site. I believe this explanations far better than anything that I could state:

"AKVIS Enhancer is an image enhancement software for revealing details on a picture. Enhancer allows detecting details from underexposed, overexposed and mid tone areas of a photo. The tool is useful in cases when a photo lacks detail. For example, when a picture has been taken with the background overexposed and consequently the foreground is hardly discernible, which is especially annoying when you take a picture of a person; or when a photo lacks dramatic effect due to vagueness of the scene. If you try to reveal details in highlighted or overshadowed areas using exposure correction (for example, Levels) you run the risk of spoiling the parts of the image that you want to leave unchanged. The idea behind Enhancer is entirely different. AKVIS Enhancer brings out details by intensifying color transition. It means that Enhancer strengthens the difference between adjacent pixels having different color gradations and therefore allows revealing not only details in the shadow but even details in the overexposed and mid tone areas. Earlier it was possible (and such image enhancement programs exist) to achieve the same result by manipulating with 2-4 shots of the same scene. AKVIS Enhancer does it all out of one shot thanks to the advanced algorithm of photo correction. AKVIS Enhancer is useful not only for correction of family and art photos, but can be effective as well in technical use. Publishers of technical literature can apply Enhancer to show equipment illustrations in detail; Doctors can use Enhancer to increase the level of detail on roentgenograms, etc. AKVIS enhancer is a plug-in. It integrates into your image processing programs adding new features. The plug-in is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel Photo-Paint, etc"y

Experience: I had some problems downloading the software and I asked for assistance from the company. They were most cooperative and I quickly was able to get the software up and running. (It was finger trouble on my part). As stated above, the program attaches to another program such as Photoshop or Corel and the only identifier is the word "Enhance" which appears in the tool bar after you open the host program. As any novice photographer, I have a number of pictures that fall in the category of "when a picture has been taken with the background overexposed and consequently the foreground is hardly discernible." I used Enhancer on a number of these pictures and, YES, it did make a noticeable difference. It was easy to use, it was quick and I liked the results. did another test with the same pictures. I went to Picasa 2 and used its feature "I'm Feeling lucky" (under View and Edit) to see if there was a difference. I really could not tell if there was a difference. Maybe for some photos there would be but I could not tell from the photos I used. The question I would have to ask-why spend $69 when I can get the same or nearly the same results by using Picasa, which I can get free?

Conclusion: As for anything pro for the program, it does the things that the web site states the program is to do, the company is helpful when I asked for help and the program does load easily. I really do not have anything negative about the program itself. My comments here is that I doubt anyone who is familiar with Paint Shop Pro 6 or 7 or the CS version would want to use Enhancer when they have far more significant tools at their disposal to enhance a picture.

One last comment. As I stated above, I would rather use Picasa 2, which I can download for free from the web rather than pay $69 for AKVIS Enhancer 3.

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