Blemish Concealer effectively removes obvious blemishes such as acne, freckles, and shadows from under eyes. It is also good at removing small water stains, mold spots, or other softly colored, low contrast defects from a relatively smooth background textures.

Skin Softener softens large areas of skin. It works to reduce wrinkles, small shadows, and oily skin glare. It tries to improve the look of skin without giving the face that plastic "Photo-shopped" look. It performs a blending with the background so you don't have to manually blend it by using a feathered selection. Before using this you should remove any skin defect that you wish to remove first. The softener was also used on the face of the girl in the image. It gives it a less harsh look.

JPEG Repair fixes those fuzzy halos around sharp edges, and those 8x8 pixel blocks that frequent low quality JPEG images. This can be really helpful to those designers that are forced to use suspect quality images by their clients. JPEG Repair cannot restore the detail that is lost in the compression process, but it can smooth things out, and make them more aesthetically pleasing.

So what is new in Image Doctor 2? First and foremost, is it's speed. I was really impressed with how fast it rendered the changes. Alien Skin has changed how it's rendering algorithms work and it really shows. Next the range of skin retouching has been expanded to the Skin Softener, and the Blemish Concealer; in version 1, it had the Spot Lifter. The new skin retouching filters offer many more possibilities. Finally the user interface has been upgraded and simplified, as well as the addition of an Automatic Mode to Smart Fill when source texture location is not important.

I have to say that Image Doctor 2 has really matured into a great product. Speed issues are virtually non existent, and the user interface is really easy to use. Sure you could perform many of these fixes your self via Photoshop, but why would you want to more than maybe the first time to say you did. Not to mention that it would take hours longer than with Image Doctor 2. If you need to do image repair on a regular basis, then this is a must have. To everyone else, it is highly recommended.

Image Doctor 2 is available at the Alien Skin online store for $199.00 new, or $99.00 for an upgrade.