Zoner Photo Studio X Bringing Much Faster RAW Work and AI to Find Faces in Pictures

The universal photo editing and management software Zoner Photo Studio X just got even better. Its Spring Update brings a load of new presets and a major speedup to RAW file loading. Layers now get more space in the Editor, and work with them is smoother thanks to layer groups and group edits. Our developers have teamed up with university researchers and added face-recognizing AI to improve our automated edits. On the licensing front, our annual subscriptions can now be paid for in monthly installments.

Wait-free Work with RAW

Work with RAW files in the Develop module is now much faster due to new indexing techniques. So when revisiting photos, users do not need to wait and can edit them immediately. “This speedup puts us in the top tier alongside Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. When you’re editing a batch with hundreds of pictures, it can save you dozens of minutes,” notes Product Manager Jan Kupčík. This is not by far the end of our work on speeding up the program; users can look forward to further progress by summertime.

Better Photo Enhancement With AI

For one of the most interesting new features in ZPS X, our developers teamed up with scientists from the University of Technology in Brno, Czech Republic. Using tens of thousands of photos, they trained a neural network that can determine the presence of faces in a photo. So our automatic edits now give better results than ever.

Develop: Dozens of New Presets

Our options for automatic edits continue to grow, so that the time needed for photo edits can continue to shrink. Auto-enhancement now has several modes for various photo types and looks. ZPS X has also been enriched with four new groups of preset filters that help with black-and-white conversions, teeth whitening, and adjusting tinting in a single click. Every edit is reflected in the settings sliders so that it can be fine-tuned manually.

Editor: Layers Rule the Roost

Several tools in Develop and the Editor now open up in a second panel for better-organized work. That also provides more space for the most important thing—work with layers. Users have new options here as well. They can create nested layer groups and apply effects and layer edits to those groups. The unique combination of folders and layer linking offers users complete freedom.

But the above is just the start of our new features. For example, we’ve improved our Process and Camera and Lens Profile controls and moved them to the top of Develop’s side panel. Users thus no longer have to scroll to the bottom of the panel for these settings, and can now set default cameras and lens corrections.

New Monthly Fee Option

Zoner Photo Studio X is sold as a $39 annual subscription. Users will newly be able to cover its fee via monthly payments if they prefer smaller ongoing payments instead of a single large one. These will be $4,99 per month. The monthly payment option will be offered starting in early April.

During their subscriptions, users are entitled to regular updates, exclusive tutorials and other materials, as well as free priority technical support.

The full version of the program is available to download and try free for 30 days at www.zoner.com. Users whose trial version has run out and who haven’t yet purchased ZPS X can try this new update free for 10 days. For more details on the spring update, see https://www.zoner.com/en/zps-x-spring-2018-update.

Zoner Photo Studio X has been out for a year and a half, and so its first subscribers are now renewing. “A full 80% of our users are continuing their subscriptions, and the overall subscriber count is growing briskly thanks to new arrivals. Our overall numbers are thus positive feedback for us, and they also give us room to constantly improve the program and customer care,” says Zoner’s Head of Software Michal Prouza.

Zoner is an authority in the world of digital photography. For over twenty years, it’s been delivering solutions for photographers, from the popular Zoner Photo Studio photo software to the Zonerama online galleries and the Learn Photography magazine. In its home country, it’s also a key photo educator, and even an Internet and web/e-commerce services provider. Headquartered in the Czech Republic in the heart of Europe, the company has branches throughout the continent and in the USA and Japan, and employs over 100 people.

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