Naked Light Debuts, Aims Straight at Photoshop

Naked Light

Naked Light came out today as a public beta, with the grand ambition to be an alternative to imaging giant Photoshop. Their blurb:

“The emperor has new clothes. Introducing Naked light. Non-destructive image editing. Node-based compositing. Live filters. High-end tools. And infinite resolution. It’s image editing, re-invented.”

It features new tools like the Noise Brush, which dusts subtle details wherever you want, and Gradient Selection, which makes quick work of vignetting and other effects.

The makers of Naked Light also try to differentiate the new application from Photoshop:

“In Photoshop, you need to convert an image to a Smart Object to use Smart Filters. You then need to convert these back to use important features like dodging and burning. In Naked light, everything is smart and nondestructive—with no effort on your part.

In Photoshop, you can only apply Adjustments as Adjustment Layers, and Filters as Smart Filters. In Naked light, there’s no difference between adjustments, filters, and layer effects—and you can apply all filters in both manners.”

In Photoshop, you can only have one mask for all Smart Filters. In Naked light, every filter can have its own mask.”

In Photoshop, you can only have one mask per layer. To create more, you need to stick a layer inside of a folder. In Naked light, you can create an infinite number of Mask nodes, and quickly drag or duplicate them between rows of nodes as needed.”

[Site: Naked.la]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.