Zoner Photo Studio X Software Review (Spring Update 2024)

Advanced editing software isn’t essential for enjoying your photography, but there is no doubt that it helps if you want to venture beyond JPEG filters or in-camera Raw processing. The good news is that there is a great selection of very capable software on the market and Zoner Photo Studio X (ZPS X for brevity) ranks among the very best and a great alternative to Adobe and other rivals for Windows users. It’s a modular workflow software for stills and video editing with all the tools and features you would expect and, as you’ll see shortly, features that might surprise you.
ZPS X is subscription-based with two big updates scheduled every year, and here we are going to concentrate on the Spring 2024 update. To learn more about ZPS X please see our previous review here. 

Zoner Photo Studio X Spring 2024 update highlights

Many photographers relate HDR (high dynamic range) technique to those gaudy, over-processed photographs that were all the rage a few years ago. So, let’s be clear from the onset: ZPS X’s HDR skills are about making the most of the tonal range available from Raw files and the growing number of more affordable HDR-capable monitors that are reaching the market.

ZPS X has HDR and SDR (standard tonal range) capabilities so it will suit your current monitor and means you’re future-proofed should you upgrade to an HDR monitor. The Zoner website has more about the subject so click here for more on true HDR photography and here for details about suitable hardware recommended by Zoner. Click here for VESA certified HDR monitors and laptops.

This update also brings along three new creative tools Grain, Glow and Halation, a Defringe feature to eliminate chromatic aberration, a batch reject feature and Effect 3D LUT to give your photos the colour style and look you want. 

To speed up workflow, more keyboard shortcuts have been added to the Manager, Develop and Editor modules. For more details on these, click here. 

For video, six transition effects have been added, bringing the total available to 36.

New features of Zoner Photo Studio X Spring 2024 update

• True HDR 
• Glow to give your shots more life
• Halation mode to give your shots a retro look
• Realistic Grain for film-like results feature
• Defringe feature to eliminate chromatic aberration
• Batch reject function
• Effect 3D LUT for getting the right look
• More keyboard shortcuts
• Improved video features, including six new transitions
• Native support for more Raw formats

Zoner Photo Studio X Ease Of Use & Performance

For this overview, we have focused on the HDR and three creative features using a Lenovo Yoga laptop running Windows 10.

Our digital cameras are remarkable when it comes to handling a very wide dynamic range and HDR-capable monitors show this with the help of the latest version of ZPS X. If you have a genuinely suitable monitor you need to set it up correctly and that includes settings in the computer’s operating system.

SDR processed image

HDR processed image
 

We worked on several high contrast scenes including this strongly lit beach scene. It was a scene shot directly into the sun and such is the contrast range that you’ll never recover the detail around the sun, but you can see here that ZPS X with its HDR skills did pretty well with the scene.

If you are viewing the images on an SDR monitor you won’t see any difference between the differently processed images. Indeed, that can also be the case on monitors that claim to simulate HDR.

In ZPS X’s SDR mode, we adjusted the sliders (above) to reveal the intense highlights and this produced a slightly veiled, grey appearance—it’s not a good look. You can see from the histogram the highlights are off the right-side of the graph.

Using HDR, we managed to pull in more highlight detail while keeping the highlights clean and white. On the histogram below, you can see that extra headroom in the highlights available for recovery.

To be fair, with the nature of the intense lighting in this scene, getting any detail is a challenge but having ZPS X’s HDR skills is more than a little handy. With Raws where the contrast range is a little less extreme, the benefit will be more clear and fine-tuning your HDR processing skills will also obviously help. Zoner has more on HDR set-up and editing here.

Three new creative effects have come along with the Spring 2024 update: Grain, Glow and Halation, so let’s take a look at them in that order. 

Digital noise or grain is an image characteristic that most of us spend a lot of time trying to minimise, although it is true with today’s digital camera you can shoot at ISO 1600 and faster with no problem at all, and there are several very capable denoising software options. 

In ZPS X there’s the chance to add grain and it did a fine job adding a realistic film look.

The tool has three control sliders—Amount, Size and Smoothness—together with two tick boxes, Color Grain and Luma Adaptive. Magnifyng the image in the interface lets you observe the effect in much closer detail and the preview is updated a few seconds after you’ve used the sliders.

To show the difference as well as what’s possible, we pushed up the Amount slider to 100 and then adjusted the Size and Smoothness sliders to taste. We also ticked the Colored grain option and the effect you can see below. Used strongly, it gives the look that we used to see with earlier digital cameras at very high ISO speeds.

Ticking the Luma Adaptive option means the grain is less obvious on brighter areas so has a slightly cleaner look.

Above we have shown the whole image and close-ups below, magnifying to 200% so you can really see the realistic look that ZPS X’s Grain effect provides. 

Clearly, it depends on the required effect but the Size slider gives a very coarse effect when pushed to its limit so use with care. That said, it is true that generally speaking film is grainy, even medium speed emulsions, and the ZPS X feature gives the opportunity of emulating a filmic look with evenly patterned, crisp and neutral grain with the Colored grain box left unticked.

Grain only

Colored grain selected

The Glow and Halation tools work on the highlights more obviously than mid-tones and shadows and, of course, can be applied in combination for the desired effect. Of course, that applies to all of ZPS  X’s creative tools.

In the Glow menu, move the slider up to 100 and you can instantly appreciate that the tool is very well named. It just spreads out highlights very nicely and can probably give great results to a wide range of subject matter, from scenics and portraits to still-life and abstract images. As with the Grain feature, we’ve used the effect at 100 so you can see how good the result can be. The Threshold and Size sliders vary when the effect kicks in and the breadth of the glow effect.

The image used here was a handheld twilight shot taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a 24mm f/1.8 lens with an exposure of 0.3sec at f/2.8. The highlights already had a glow and using the effect at 100 produced a lovely ‘smudged’ effect that gives an impressionistic effect.

No glow applied

With glow at 100

The final tool we looked at in this Spring update was the Halation effect. Halation in photography means light spread or bleeding usually in highlight areas and that’s what this new tool provides. As with the Glow effect, Halation suits many subjects and in our example of a backlit highland cow, the extra glow around the highlights is a lovely effect.

With no Halation effect applied

Halation effect applied at 100

Value For Money

Zoner Photo Studio X is available priced at $5.99 per month, $59 annually. That’s undeniably good value compared with rivals, and that’s enhanced further because you know that there are two big upgrades scheduled each spring and autumn. The only negative is if you prefer an outright purchase, but that said, subscriptions are part and parcel of everyday life for most of us, so it’s not a big point.

Zoner Photo Studio X Verdict

When we first tested Zoner Photo Studio X we were delighted to give it ‘Highly Recommended’. That recognition still applies and the Spring 2024 updates only enhance its appeal further. Adding HDR processing is a big advance with lots of potential, so if you want to see your shots at their very best, especially in highlights, then ZPS X is just the ticket, assuming you have an HDR-capable monitor. And there’s more to enjoy with the Grain, Glow and Halation tools which are dead easy to use and help produce images with more personality.

All this new stuff is important but it is worth remembering the ZPS X is already an excellent, award-winning workflow software for stills and video and its appeal has only been embellished further with this upgrade. 

With a free seven day trial available here for download, give it a try. We think you will be impressed.

[REVIEW_FOOTER]R_features=4.5|R_Handling=4|R_performance=4.5|R_value=4.5|R_overall=4.5|A_level=4.5|A_text=With its workflow skills that include true HDR processing, Zoner Photo Studio X is an impressive software which has a strong appeal to stills and video creators. |E_id=7837[/REVIEW_FOOTER]

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