The folks at Zoner Inc. have been keeping themselves busy. The release of Zoner X was only a year and a half ago. Four updates later and just a few short months after the Winter 2017 Update to Zoner Photo Studio X comes the Spring 2018 Update. With improvements and new features, the latest version is a free update to users on the $39 per year annual subscription plan. Zoner software is no longer available as a boxed version and the program remains only for Windows computers. I tested version 19.1804.2.61.

What’s New

There are changes, improvements, and enhancements throughout the program. The most significant ones I found were the addition of four new groups of preset filters in the Develop module and changes to the layers panel in the Editor module. Automatic edits now use artificial intelligence algorithms developed in collaboration with the University of Brno in the Czech Republic to determine the presence of faces in photos for improved results in editing.

All presets are now available as a popup fly-out menu in the Develop module. The legacy presets are still available in the “Old Presets” group, but new Color, Black and White, Components, and Tool Actions presets are added. Rolling your mouse over the styles in the first three of these presets previews the effect in a small preview window. There is also a new Auto-Enhancement group of presets with six modes for various photo types and looks. Significantly, all of the changes made by the presets are shown in the Develop module sliders, allowing you to adjust them further and save the adjustments as a custom preset.

You can set the Presets panel in the Develop module to pop up and show all of the available presets. © Stan Sholik

The layers panel in the Editor module now allows you to create nested layer groups and apply effects and layer edits to the groups. You can drag and drop and link layers easily, and lines in the layers panel clearly show links and nested groups.

There are also other enhancements. New indexing is said to speed working with RAW files in the Develop module. Also in the Develop module, both the Process and Camera and Lens Profile controls are now situated at the top of the side panel, no longer requiring you to scroll to the bottom to the access them. And excellent new portrait retouching tools, smoothing and retouching brushes, are now available in the Develop module.

User Friendliness

Interface changes in this latest update improve on the already quite user-friendly workspaces from the preceding version. The Presets panel in Develop and the Edits panel in the Editor can now be configured to dock to the left of the right panel if you have a wide display, or to appear as a popup if you have a normal or smaller display. This is especially helpful in the Editor where the right panel now has lots of room for the creation of many layers without the need to do a lot of scrolling.

Moving the Camera and Lens Profiles tool to the top of the Develop panel ensures that you will not forget to apply the appropriate profiles to your images. This must still be done by manually selecting the appropriate camera and manually selecting the lens if the automatic lens selection button does not select the correct one. Also, you must still have the Adobe Camera Raw or a third party camera and lens database loaded into Zoner for this tool to function.

Overall, this latest update to Zoner Photo Studio is very intuitive for new users. The only cause of confusion is finding some of the same tools in both the Develop and the Editor modules. Once you understand that the Develop module provides non-destructive editing and the Editor enhancements are baked into the file and require exporting, users should be fine. It may help to think of the Develop module as the equivalent of Adobe Lightroom and the Editor as the module with Photoshop capabilities. In this light, the Manager/Browser gives the equivalent functions of Adobe Bridge.

The Browser in the Manager module functions as the equivalent of Adobe Bridge. © Stan Sholik

What We Liked

With Capture One, Photoshop, and most other image editors embracing presets, it is nice to see them incorporated into Zoner. The Auto Enhancements are particularly well done and in many instances may well be all you need. The other presets in the new categories are equally valuable, and being able to preview the result in a small popup window is welcome. Zoner also enables you to adjust the presets with the tools in the Develop module as well as save the adjustments as a new preset. And you can now brush on skin smoothing and retouch blemishes in the Develop module. Most users may never need to use the Editor at all.

The Portrait Auto-Enhancement does an excellent job making automatic corrections to a portrait. © Stan Sholik

Working with layers, and especially working with complex nested and grouped layers may well be beyond the ability of most users of this low-cost software. But it gives them, as well as professionals, the ability to do most any type of photo composition or image creation they can imagine. Having more room for multiple layers in the Editor is especially helpful for complex tasks, with the adjustment tools relegated to a popup or a separate docked column.

What We Didn’t

I found all of the new features to be very well implemented. Older issues in the original program still exist, mostly related to the selection tools, masking, and the ability to refine masks. With the push made in this version to improve the ability for users to work with layers, I look forward to improvements in selection and masking to make Zoner Photo Studio X a full competitor for Photoshop for many professional users.

How It Compares

In its rapid pace of development, Zoner Photo Studio X is quickly closing in on the functionality of Bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop, and all under the hood of one integrated low-cost, albeit subscription, program. With a more popular-looking interface design and likely shorter learning curve, Zoner might even lure some professionals from Capture One, particularly for their personal work. Zoner is a powerful image editor for Windows users.

Stan Sholik is a commercial/advertising photographer in Santa Ana, CA, specializing in still life and macro photography. His latest book, Shoot Macro, published by Amherst Media, is now available.

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