COMPANY: Light Crafts, Inc. | URL: www.lightcrafts.com | TYPE: Standalone | PLATFORM: Mac, Windows | PRICE: $149.95
				LightZone provides a unique visual approach that focuses on what you want to do with your photos and not how to do it allowing you to retouch your photos in a simple and natural way. LightZone is based on photographic principles and on Ansel Adams' Zone System. Work at a higher level LightZone allows you to work at a higher level and focus on being creative rather than having to struggle with things like pixels, curves and histograms. Our photographic approach allows you to become proficient at image editing in a matter of hours. Use your intuition as a photographer rather than having to spend years reading books and attending courses. Get your work done in a fraction of the time LightZone has the right tools for photographers. With a single click, sophisticated image editing functions allow you to retouch your images in minutes whereas it would take hours in other applications. Layers and Masks made easy LightZone uses an innovative way to do both layers and masks allowing you to mask corrections and retouches to specific areas of the image quickly and easily. Masks are drawn directly on the image and can be modified at any time. Consistent color management You don't have to be concerned with color spaces and color management issues. LightZone handles colors correctly, transparently, and consistently all the way through the retouching process. Key Features ZoneMapper The ZoneMapper tool allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your photo for any combination of the highlights, midtones, or shadows in a way that is far more intuitive than using either "levels" or "curves" tools found in other applications. ZoneFinder The ZoneFinder shows a miniature version of your photo that has been segmented into 16 grayscale zones each differing by 50% brightness or half an F-stop from the next. The ZoneFinder allows you to see where the highlights, midtones, and shadows in your photo are in order to make adjustments using the ZoneMapper. Vector-Based Regions and Masks Using regions to create masks, you can restrict a tool's effect to just specific areas of your photo. Unlike other applications, LightZone allows you to draw (rather than paint) regions. Regions are therefore always editable. Additionally, every region has a feathering area that smoothly blends the region into the surrounding area preventing sharp edges. All Tools are Created Equal LightZone organizes the tools used to edit your photo into a stack similarly to "layers" in other applications. Unlike other applications' layers, every tool in the tool stack is a layer. (For example, you create a sharpen as a layer rather than sharpening an existing layer.) This means that every tool is non-destructive and therefore can be edited or deleted at any time. Linear Color Space LightZone always works in a 16-bit linear color space. Unlike a non-linear gamma-corrected color space, a linear color space doesn't introduce errors (such as increasing noise, edge distortion, and hue shifts) during enhancement operations such as sharpening, blurring, or saturation adjustments. Direct Raw File Support LightZone can open and edit raw files as easily as TIFF or JPEG. Raw files from Canon, Nikon, Minolta, and Pentax cameras are supported. (Fuji is coming soon.) Additionally, LightZone can open DNG files. Plus a Host of Other Powerful Tools Contrast mask, sharpen, blur, hue/saturation, color balance, color cast, white balance, channel mixer, noise reduction, clone, crop, and rotate.