The countdown to Photo Suite 9 has begun. Each Friday, onOne Software is tantalizing us each Friday, pulling the curtain back on more and more of the new features coming. Much of what was covered last week was covered again, with a little more reveals happening along the way.

Here are the new items that caught my eye from today's webinar previewing PPS9.

Lens Flare

We got a closer look at the Lens Flare filter today. The filter has two flare styles, Sunspot and Lens Flare. The Sunspot style is kind of like the "white ball of light" you'd get if shooting toward the sun in late afternoon. The Lens Flare style is colored circles and ovals of light – what you'd expect from a traditional, in-camera lens flare.

For both types of flares, you can control the opacity and scale of each. The flare can also be centered anywhere you wish on the image. During the webinar, it seemed that the shapes of the Lens Flare style stretched and compressed, depending on where in the frame you placed the flare. A nice touch and attention to detail from onOne.

Also, each can be treated with a color style. Blue, green, and yellow tones were shown today, although the term "placeholders" was also mentioned in the same breath. The Amount, Vibrance, Shadow Fade, and Blooming of the color style is completely customizable.  

Lastly, there's a Random option at the bottom. That should prove fun.

Perfect Browse

As I discussed last week, Browse is a promising workflow took, yet won't suit my needs for an immediate migration from Aperture. I paid closer attention to the interface, and the merge of the Sources and Folders panes is good – makes the interface much cleaner.

I'd still like to see Browse evolve and allow searching across folders. I also think a metadata view is needed when working with an image full screen. An unobtrusive bar across the bottom to show rating, like/disklike, and color labels is all that's needed. Otherwise, you're tagging in the dark.

Smart Photos

This is the crown jewel of Photo Suite 9. A subtlety revealed this week is in addition to re-editing the various layers in a smart photo, you can delete layers as well. For example, you have a photo treated in Enhance, Effects, and B&W. Then decide, you don't want the B&W treatment. Right-click on the B&W later in the Smart Photos area and remove it. I am not exactly sure how this will work when run as a plug-in from Aperture or Lightroom, or if this level of control is only within Perfect Browse.

Also, the Smart Photo data is stored within a standard PSD file. However, if you make edits to that PSD file in Photoshop, or apply further treatments to the file in Lightroom's Develop module or Aperture adjustments, sending the PSD to PPS9 again will "flatten" the image.

Masking

I'm warming up to the new tool set. Keep and drop are gone. However, the improvements in the Perfect Brush coupled with the locking the color sampling I expect will work well for me.

If you're not aware of it, the Perfect Brush is continually sampling the color at the center of the brush to determine what colors to remove/keep. If you hold down the Command key (Mac) or Control key (PC), the sampling is suspended. Whatever color is beneath the brush when you press the key is locked. This gives you the moral equivalent of the "drop" brush.

All good stuff. Really looking forward to the public beta in early October. I wanna start test driving this stuff!!!