Zoner Studio – Autumn / Fall 2025 Update and More

– Partner Content – 

For a software to thrive in the competitively fierce image editing market, it needs to offer so much more than basic skills. Of course, it should have the essentials such as cloning, layers and exposure control, but contemporary image creators need a workflow programme with the capacity to handle large numbers of high res files quickly and efficiently, video editing skills and there’s the small matter of AI and the creative power that it can bring to your photography. 

Zoner Studio is a powerful software that ticks all the boxes, and it’s great value for money too compared to what’s available from rivals Adobe. It’s a subscription only software available for Windows 10 and 11, and it comes with the commitment of two major updates every year.

The latest Autumn / Fall 2025 update has recently dropped with two headline grabbing features, AI Close-ups and AI interpolation, of which more soon, and joins a long and impressive roll-call of innovative and practical editing features.

The Manager module makes browsing, selecting, rating and organising images straightforward and speedy.

Accelerate your workflow even more in Zoner Studio

Take out a subscription to Zoner Studio and you’ll get two updates each year. For full details of the Autumn / Fall 2025 update, click here. 

Zoner Studio is a modular workflow software with tabbed menus, Manager, Develop, Editor, Print and Video. One of the headline updates is in the Manager module, where the software helps you organise and rate images quickly. 

While it’s wonderful that we have cameras with super-fast burst shooting rates, we can end up with many near-identical photographs, and any tool that can speed up the selection process should be welcomed with open arms.

In Zoner Studio, we now have AI Close-ups, a feature that speeds up identifying keepers and works across a range of subject matter with Faces, People, Animals, Birds, Vehicles and Airplanes available in the drop-down menu. The software automatically zooms into the detected subject so, for example, you can check out facial expression in portraits or wing position in bird in flight shots and quickly rate shots for further editing. 

The second major feature in the latest update is AI Resize which has two options to increase the size of small files, either originals or greatly cropped images, to produce a bigger result.

Zoner Studio AI Close-ups tool automatically zooms into images so you can see the subject in greater detail which makes identifying keepers simple.

The AI Close-ups tool has a drop-down menu with subject options and zoom percentages.

AI Resize (reconstructive interpolation) can be used on single images or in batches and it’s quick because no new content in the file is created. This also limits how large you can make a file and this is around double the size of the original.

If you need a bigger enlargement, there’s AI Resize Generative which increases file size without quality loss. In this technology the software assesses the file and uses AI to fill in missing details and can even look at blurred areas of the image to produce a smooth-looking larger file. Because Zoner Studio isn’t just stretching the image to make it bigger and is working to create content to fill in the gaps, the process takes a few seconds.

The starling was captured with a 400-800mm zoom lens but even at 800mm, the bird was small in the frame and needed cropping for a tighter crop.

Cropping tightly on the bird took the original 50 megapixel image from 8640x5760pixels to just 2183×1455 pixels.

Resizing using AI Resize Generative took the cropped file back to its original size and you can see on the magnified image the benefit of using AI. On the left is the normally resized shot, while on the right is the AI generated image and you can see the extra detail it has produced.

AI features designed to make more of your pictures painlessly

Of course, the Autumn / Fall 2025 update is big news, but if Zoner Studio (formerly known as Zoner Photo Studio X) is new to you, it’s worth recapping on some of the huge advances the software has seen in the recent past.

True HDR editing was the leading feature in the Spring 2024 update. More and more monitors and laptops are being introduced with VESA certified HDR capability that can show a greater tonal range, especially in the highlights, than standard SDR (standard dynamic range) screens. The true HDR processing ability of Zoner Studio will help you make the most of Raws to enjoy on the latest monitors.

SDR image

HDR Image

Zoner Studio has true HDR processing capability which, if you have an HDR compliant screen, helps you produce more detail in the highlights than a SDR image. Image credit: Will Cheung

Digital capture nowadays is so good that images can be too clean and clinical, and what Zoner also added in this update was the ability to emulate the look and feel of film with Grain, Glow and Halation tools. Controllable and realistic, the look of images can be precisely tweaked in Zoner Studio to match the mood you’re trying to reflect and it’s all achieved simply with minimal mouse clicks.

AI-powered features arrived in style in the Zoner Studio Autumn / Fall 2024 update and these included AI Portrait Presets, AI Background Removal and AI Automatic Enhancement.

AI Portrait Presets have the power to detect specific facial features and create masks so you can tweak precisely what you feel needs adjusting.

The AI Background Removal tool does exactly what you’d expect from its name and you can use it for portraits among other subjects. Where it comes in useful is with product photography, perhaps when you are preparing images to post on an auction or sales site such as Etsy, and the professional look can drive sales.

Click on Auto-Enhancement followed by Full Automatic at 100% very quickly transformed this underexposed portrait of Daisy. The portraits featured in this feature were taken at a Timelines Events shoot. Image by Will Cheung

AI Automatic Enhancement in the Develop module can improve photos very effectively with a couple of clicks. For sheer speed, take the Full Automatic option and set the slider to how strong you want the effect to be up to 100% or choose Portrait, Landscape or one of the tonal control options. 

Masks are very powerful and Zoner Studio has full masking options, so if you prefer to take control, click on the Mask icon. This is also in the Develop module and there’s the option of four AI-powered masks, Subject, Background, Sky and Object, and five traditional masking tools which includes Brush, Linear Gradient and Color Range. Once the mask has been created, it can be fine-tuned as necessary and the selected area can then be edited.

With four AI-powered masks and five traditional masking tools, it’s easy to pick out the area of the image that you want to edit and adjust. Model Carrie was brightened up with two masks including a radial gradient mask on her face. Image by Will Cheung

Zoner Studio Pricing & Plans

Zoner Studio is available on subscription and is Windows 10 and 11 compatible. A free, fully working, seven day version of Zoner Studio is available here. No credit card is needed to download.

Individual licence $5.99 a month, $59 for a year. 

Benefits include free updates and new tools twice a year, 20GB of free storage, 15 free photo prints and a Zonerama Premium account. 

Family Plan $9.98 a month, $98 a year

For two or more people in your household. Each person gets their own account plus all the benefits of the individual licence.