On April 21st Photoshop and Lightroom guru Scott Kelby wrote on his blog: “Breaking News: Imagine having Layers in Lightroom. Well, OnOne Software Just Did it!!”. That clearly sounds like a break-through, and implies that you can now have layers integrated in your Lightroom workflow. The plug-in in question is made by OnOne Software and is called ‘Perfect Layers’. It is available for Lightroom now and will also become available for Apple Aperture. However, anyone who looks at this plug-in a little better, will notice some things that put Scott’s claims in a different perspective. First of all, it seems that Scott Kelby is one of the authors of Perfect Layers, or at least helped with the development. There’s nothing wrong with that of course and it doesn’t make the plug-in less of a break-through if it does what Kelby suggests. But that’s the point. This plug-in doesn’t do at all what Scott Kelby suggests! It works like any other plug-in in Lightroom, meaning that it generates a PSD-copy of your RAW-image and adds layers to that copy! It doesn’t add layers to your Lightroom (RAW) workflow, it adds layers by bringing a copy outside of that workflow. That means that the claim that this plug-in adds layers to Lightroom is very questionable. The OnOne website is just as bad. They say “With Perfect Layers you can create and edit multi-layered Photoshop files directly within Photoshop Lightroom”. That’s simply a lie. You can’t create or edit ‘directly within Lightroom’ with this software. It’s an bare-bone external editor.

Layers in a PSD-copy is nothing special and certainly not a break-through in any way. Photoshop can do that and Lightroom integrates Photoshop as an external editor. This is possible since day one that Lightroom exist. If you think Photoshop is too expensive for your taste, and that may be why Perfect Layers could be an alternative, think again: Photoshop Elements can also give your layers in this fashion (and a lot more that Perfect Layers doesn’t give you) and does so for half the price that OnOne Software charges for Perfect Layers. Yes, you are reading this correctly: Perfect Layers doesn’t do anything that Photoshop Elements can also do, but it cost twice as much. I think it’s a very bad thing that Scott Kelby is willing to use his marketing power is such a misleading way. This is getting close to a scam if you ask me.

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