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Athentech Perfectly Clear

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We first saw this software at Focus, where we were provided with a fairly convincing demonstration of its capabilities. The most striking feature was that it dealt with slightly 'off' images in quite a subtle way but definitely improved them overall.

All images provided by cameras are available as RGB data (in one form or another, some of which look nothing like RGB!) so ultimately anybody manipulating an image has the same field of play. Nothing that you can do in a bespoke software cannot be mimicked in Photoshop providing the user has sufficient skill.

This is the niche that software such as Perfectly Clear exploits - onestop click solutions to common problems. This reviewer, then, is always sceptical about the inflated claims made by the makers of the products and Athentech is no different. Indeed Authentic risk my ire by rubbishing 'competitors' and showing appalling results compared alongside their own. Such tactics are an invite to repeat the comparisons and sometimes the results are painful! So it was that the awkward squad set to work.

Despite the misgivings, we were actually impressed by the results Perfectly Clear obtained on portraits with just a click of the mouse. Our example, taken from their website was processed by a number of methods and the results are compared in the composite image here. This deals with the age-old problem of certain skin complexions overreddening when shot with a digital camera.

We removed the effect using Perfectly Clear and then used an HSB Adjustment layer to reproduce the near-identical result in Photoshop. Perfectly Clear did an equally good job with a lot less fuss and for good measure repeated the process on a shot in which a facial tone was quite marked with red patches of skin.

For the record, the overred skin tones were showing Lab co-ordinates of a:30/b:26 and were shifted to a:25/b:25.

Despite this, not everything was a success. The documentation makes claims for landscape enhancement but if a portrait has a significant landscape element to it things got a bit sticky. Choosing Portrait as the default setting messed up the background really badly; choosing Landscape as the default did nothing to correct the colour flaws of the image or the face.

The image used was one that we had previously tested with onOne Skin Tune and the legacy files were dragged from the archive to make the comparative composite image. In all cases Skin Tune outperformed Perfectly Clear.

During these tests we discovered a flaw in the interface. The preview panel depicts a devastating amount of artifacting in the image when the defaults for Portrait, Noise Removal and Fix Dark are employed. This translates to the processed image in the case of Portrait but not the other two; in other words the preview is a poor representation of what will eventually be created. The landscape default increased the contrast of the image (unacceptably).

Overall then the review has left a bitter-sweet taste. The repair of over-reddened faces is very effective and easier for the unskilled to deploy than Photoshop. For professional standard images (ie correctly white balanced, sharpened and graded) there is little that needs to be done anyway.



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026