NIK Software: Silver Efex Pro-Digital B&W Darkroom

Posted by RustyHill - 21/12/09 at 04:12 pm

Consider Black and White
Not every photo looks its best in color.  Some images just look better in black and white.  Similarly, some stories demand dramatic black and white images.  The drama and contrast of a snow or desert scene is often highlighted in black and white.

Nik Software’s U Point® control points in Silver Efex Pro provide the tools of a black and white darkroom without messy chemicals, red lights, or working by brail.

User Interface
Silver Efex Pro opens in a clean, professional interface.  Preview and Loupe views are available to review the effect on the image.  When displayed, the style browser provides thumbnail views of 29 preset styles and any user created styles.  The extensive image enhancement tools are on the left of the preview image.  These tools include:

• Brightness, contrast and structure (amount of detail) sliders;
• Add a control point button;
• Shadow and highlight sliders;
• A control point section that provides for managing control points;
• A color filter section that provides 6 preset color filters and a details subsection that enables fine tuning the filter’s hue (color) and strength;
• A film types section that provides a pull-down menu with 18 simulated films and subsections that include tools for adjusting grain, color sensitivity, and the tone curve;  and
• A stylizing section providing subsections with tools for adjusting toning (simulate traditional darkroom toners or create a custom toner); vignettes; and burning edges.

Silver Efex Workflow
Open an image in Photoshop, select Nik Software and then Silver Efex Pro from the Filters menu.  Alternatively, access Silver Efex Pro in Aperture (Images -> Edit With -> Silver Efex Pro) or Lightroom (Photo -> Edit In -> Silver Efex Pro).

After the user interface is open, apply one of the styles from the style browser that is closest to the desired look.  Next, fine-tune the image with the enhancement tools.  While the enhancement tools can be used in any order, for best results, Nik recommends starting with brightness, contrast and structure.  Add one or more control points.  Continue working down through the section menus and tools – color filters, film types, and stylizing.

Images
To illustrate the black and white control abilities of Silver Efex Pro, an image was selected from photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor).  The selected image was processed in Photoshop CS4 using Silver Efex Pro.  The original and processed images are presented below.

Original photo

Silver Efex Pro

In the above images, the blue sky was de-emphasized by placing a control point in the sky and reducing the brightness.  And blue filter was added from the color filter section.  The image was then burned along both sides and the top.

Second Example

Original photo

Silver Efex Pro

In the second set of images, the “Wet Rocks” style was selected from the style browser.  The image was further adjusted by using a control point to reduce the sky’s brightness.

The above images barely scratch the surface of Silver Efex Pro’s powerful yet easy-to-control black and white tools.

Pros: Powerful black & white control; Excellent video training

Cons: None noted

Training

• Training videos
• Webinar schedule
• Archived webinars

System Requirements:
Windows:

• 32-bit version of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista
  (64-bit operating systems with 32-bit host application)
• Pentium III 1GHz or better
• 1 GB RAM
• Adobe® Photoshop® 7 through CS4, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 through 7.0; other Adobe Photoshop plug-in compatible application**
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® 2.3 or later

Macintosh:

• Mac OS 10.4 and later
• G4, G5, Intel® Core™ Solo, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Xeon®
• 1 GB RAM
• Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 through CS4, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 and 6.0; other Adobe Photoshop plug-ins compatible applications**
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 or later
• Apple® Aperture™ 2.1 or later

** Nik Software product filters are developed to integrate seamlessly into many popular image editing applications that support the Adobe plug-in architecture and there are numerous software applications that accept Adobe plug-in compatible filters. Please consult your image editing application’s documentation for compatibility and installation instructions for 3rd-party plug-ins.

Contact: Nik Software
Cost: MSRP $199.95

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Photo Tools, Photoshop Plugin. The entry is tagged under Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop CS4, B & W, B&W, black, black and white, Lightroom, Nik, Nik software, photo, photoshop, Photoshop plug-in, Photoshop Plugin, plack and white photo, plug in, silver efex, white. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.