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Photosounder

Spectral Processor by Photosounder
MyKVRFAVORITE22WANT9
Photosounder
Photosounder by Photosounder is a Software Application for macOS and Windows. It functions as a Standalone Application.
Product
Version
1.11.2
Windows 7 and above, 64-bit only.
Product
Version
1.11.2
Mac OS 10.9 and above, Intel 64-bit only.
Other
Stand-Alone Utility / Application
Sample Formats
Loads and/or Saves
AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV
Copy Protection
Key File
My KVR - Groups, Versions, & More
45 KVR members have added Photosounder to 8 My KVR groups 53 times.
Not In Your MY KVR Groups
(or group limitation prevents versioning)
+8 in private groups

KVR Rank

Overall: 5775   4447   5446

30-Day: 3220; 7-Day: 3363; Yesterday: 962

Photosounder is a spectral editor/synthesizer with an entirely image-based approach to sound creation and editing. It allows you to transform any sound as an image and to create any possible sound from an image. It is the ultimate bridge between the graphical world and the audio world, bringing the full power of image editing to the service of creating and transforming sounds. Powerful built-in image editing tools, some yet unknown to general image editing programs, are specifically tailored to enable you to create and edit sounds with ease in ways and with results simply impossible with other programs.

The immense possibilities offered by Photosounder are only starting to be discovered. Every day spent using Photosounder brings new discoveries, new kinds of sounds never heard before, new effects never approximated, new takes on classical effects or methods, all merely by combining the power of the simple set of tools built in the program.

Features

Analysis/Synthesis:

  • Lossless processing of sounds based on images, so that real sounds can be transformed by transforming their image.
  • Noise-based synthesis for synthesising original sounds from nothing or resynthesising wildly transformed sounds in a way that results in a continuous and smooth spectrum.
  • Exclusive spectrogram analysis algorithm that natively operates on a logarithmic scale and can vary time/frequency resolution depending on frequency for a better clarity and a better resynthesis.
  • Coming soon: Real-time live synthesis, allowing real-time time-stretching or to hear changes as they are made to the images.

Editing:

  • Dedicated graphical editing tools best suited for editing or creating sounds, such as various sprays to enhance, suppress, erase or create features, including a harmonics modifier to apply all modifications to a frequency and its harmonics at once.
  • Layer system similar to Photoshop's, with layer groups and various layer blending modes, including exclusive layer convolution modes.
  • Extensive graphical/mathematical operations specially adapted to spectrogram editing which allow you to apply all kinds of effects, from the most common (such as EQ, compression, denoising...) to the weirdest (envelope reversion, spectral gating, pitch inversion, spectral quantization...).
  • Processing in third-party image processing programs by exporting images to BMP files and importing of the externally modified images.
  • Rhythm and note overlays to help with music composition.

History:

  • Ability to restore a session, even after a crash.
  • All actions are instantly saved to a history file in a human-readable language so none of your work is ever lost. Also allows you to edit the history by hand or save a project and all its history.
  • Easy scripting to automate actions.

Uses

Photosounder can be used for image-based synthesis, spectral editing/sound removal/isolation, vocoding, (extreme) time stretching, pitch shifting, equalization, compression, dynamics processing, noise removal, synthesis of all types of sound, creative processing and countless original effects such as melody flattening, interval stretching, time pixelation, sound rotation, sound blurring, etc.

Latest User Reviews

Average user rating of 5.00 from 1 review
Photosounder

Reviewed By wakax [all]
June 20th, 2013
Version reviewed: XP SP3 on Windows

I watched Photosounders evolution and I compared it with other spectral editors around ( Izotope RX, SpectraLayers, Metasynth and some other free ones: Coagula, Spear etc ) and I must say now, when it reached v 1.9 that Photosounder is (finally) mature and really usable to me, because it's quite fast and it has "Live Synthesis mode - it makes any change to the image heard instantly with no interruption." and this means A LOT of FUN. This feature makes it unique ( from my knowledge ) in the world of spectral editors and I am forced to give it a 10/10.

What other features I like in Photosounder:
1) it's FAST and it boots FAST
2) it's multi-platform ( PC and Mac ) and multiprocessor
3) it has a clean and concise interface and manual
( if you know the spectral slang, there is no way to stare or get lost because everything is neat and tidy, in one screen. If you are novice, the manual and YouTube examples will guide you - that's the advantage of the a mature product, I guess :)
4) it loads and saves audio and images + you can save/stream the sound as you play/edit
( if you don't like it's operations you can load the sound as image in Photoshop or any other image editor and go wild with image filters - I do :)
5) it has layers ( now that's a must feature to build complexity )
6) it has a lot of basic image ( that also means sound ) operations
( I still work with Photoshop for extreme experiments but default Photosounder operations and tools are enough for most of stuff )
7) it has scripting for advanced processing and sharing some knowledge.
8) protection is a simple keyfile you copy to your app dir
( that means you can use it on as many computers you want to, once that you bought it ).

It's a modern and full-featured spectral editor like no other that does what it says and it's an inspiring spectral playground to create new sounds never heard before. Also - I really appreciate nowadays when a tool is not bloated ... and I hope it will never be :)

Read Review

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Comments & Discussion for Photosounder Photosounder

Discussion
Discussion: Active
Cswa
Cswa
23 January 2015 at 11:16pm

Just downloaded and installed Photosounder only to find that it is NOT a VSTi. In other words it is NOT a plug in, it is only a standalone sound processor. If you want to use it in music production you will have to export .wav, .aiff or .flac files into a Rompler or Sampler. Or if you have FL-Harmor, iZotope-Iris or something similar you can export the .bmp Image file and play it in Harmor, Iris or whatever. Just so you know and won't have misconceptions about the software as I did.

A_SN
A_SN
23 January 2015 at 11:38pm

Thanks, yeah KVR makes it more clear that it's standalone. I emailed PIB and hopefully they can make things clearer (I forwarded your email to them so they can directly deal with you too I guess).

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