We were impressed with the control this app gives you over bokeh effects. What doesn’t really impress as much are the sparkle and light hit effects - they lack subtlety, and we just couldn’t find a way to make images better-looking when they were applied. What we love is the ability to freeze any part of the image (by using a brush tool), so you can animate very specific areas. Drawing an arrow onto the image dictates the direction of motion, and there’s a slider for speed. In the Guided area you’ll also find photo animation effects, and they’re surprisingly simple to use. You can even brush in areas of focus or bokeh to really nail the detail of the image you’re trying to craft. We played around with the tool to create a very specific portion of an image sharp-focus, while giving the rest a super-soft focus. Also new to PD13 is the Bokeh edit tool, which is extremely detailed.

We love the light ray effects, but would advise you to use them sparingly as it’s easy to over-edit photos with some of these tools. One of the major issues with sky replacement is that it can be hard to get the lighting levels to feel natural, and you’d usually do that with a layer mask, but here it’s all built into the same tool. What we really appreciate is the ability to adjust not only the sky, but also the lighting on the foreground/land too. The accuracy of the blend between ‘new sky’ and foreground is very good, and the process is achieved in less than a second.

The AI-driven sky replacement is new for PhotoDirector 13, and it’s extremely powerful. There are a series of drop-down menus where you can do things like create animation effects, dispersions, light rays, and sky replacement. Next is the Guided area, and it’s there that all the ‘bells and whistles’ live.

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