Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 Review

Arcsoft's new version of their software Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 is an image editor that is photo-centric, allied with an asset management program. Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 has a browser that will allow you to sift through your digital photos, catalog and organize them so that you can find the photo that you are looking for without having to take the trouble of sifting through your entire collection. Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 is a boon to avid photographers, who create billions of photos all over the world and then feel quite lost when they are looking for a particular one, which they may have taken years ago.

The Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 has three modules in its well designed interface. They are the Browser, Process as well as Layout. Navigating between these three modules, is quite natural and does not need any particular training. However going deeper into each module will have you wanting to get some help and here is where the Darkroom has a very superficial and disappointing Help menu.

In the Browser module of Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2, you can sort your pictures and assign those star ratings. The month, year or day when a picture was taken is also imported when you download the photograph to Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2, and you also have the ability to give keyword tags to the pictures that you can create on your own. You can also give ratings and the same keywords to a group of photos by just clicking on the right side of the mouse. You can also create new keywords with in a branched tree that may require a few more mouse clicks. The pictures however have to be on your local hard drive for this search using rating systems, keywords and calendar to work. The browser in Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 does not work if the photos are residing on another computer even if you are networked.

The price of Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 is $100, and in spite of this comparatively low cost, the Process module has a lot of editing tools that you may need for correcting and processing the photos. There are professional style sliders, histograms for modifying the white balance and its levels. This is also available for color, tone, sharpness, exposure and many other aspects. You can view the photographs as they were and as modified in the views on Before and After screens that can be either left and right, bottom and top or even a split screen showing both. This gives you immediate feedback while you are working thus adding to the abilities of the program. You can even save all the edits you have made for a picture in a Recipe and then use this same recipe on other photos that you want to edit similarly.

There is a Beautify feature in Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 which has the ability to detect imperfections and wrinkles in a portrait and automatically smooth them out in the photo. For this the photo needs to have been taken with the person looking in to the camera directly while facing it full on. Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 also has a facility that allows you to edit files of the RAW, JPEG as well as TIFF files without destroying the original. So you can always go back to the original if you are satisfied with the edits you have made and need to start all over again.

The Print module in Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 allows you to drag and drop pictures into a template or fit more than one picture onto a single page. There are templates but these are limited to 7 and no custom layouts can be created. The printers ICC profile is supported by the print engine of Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 and allows for better color management that is professionally styled.

Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2, a product of Arcsoft is a program that is not evenly good. The Process module in Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 has excellent features but the modules of Browser and Printing are not as good, and almost seem like an afterthought added on to the Arcsoft Photostudio Darkroom 2 program.

Source: ArcSoft PhotoStudio Darkroom 2