NIK Software: Color Efex Pro 3.0 – Digital Color Darkroom
Posted by RustyHill - 12/01/10 at 10:01 pmBeyond Color Control – Color Efects
The image color is great, but if an image fails to convey the mood or emotion, the story behind the image falls flat. One of the filters in Color EfexPro 3.0 may be just the tool for adding just the right effect to enhance the image’s story power.
Nik Software’s U Point® control points in Color Efex Pro provide the tools of a color darkroom without messy chemicals, red lights, or working by brail.
New for Color Efex Pro 3.0:
- User Interface
- U Point – powered control points
- Selective tool interaction
- New filters: Bleach Bypass, Cross Balance, Film Effects, Film Grain, Glamour Glow, Low Key, High Key, Polaroid Transfer; and Tonal Contrast
User Interface
Color Efex Pro opens in an interface that is similar to the rest of the Nik Software plug ins. Preview and Loupe views are available to review the effect on the image. A tabbed list of the 52 effects (filters) can be displayed on the left side of the preview window. The tabs allow quick access to effects groups typically applied to an image or effect category e.g. Favorites, All, or four user selected categories. The user can select four tabs from Artistic, Landscape, Nature, Portrait, Stylizing, Traditional, or Wedding.
On the right side of the preview window are the following:
- Sliders for controlling specific aspects of the selected effect;
- shadow and highlight sliders; and
- a control point section that provides for managing control points includding adding control point buttons
Color Efex Workflow
Open an image in Photshop and select Nik Software and then Color Efex Pro from the Filters menu. Alternatively, access Color Efex Pro in Aperture (Images -> Edit With -> Color Efex Pro) or Lightroom (Photo -> Edit In -> Color Efex Pro).
After the user interface is open apply one of the effects on the left that is closest to the desired look. Then fine-tune the image with the effect controls and control points on the right.
Images
To illustrate the abilities of Color Efex Pro, an two images was selected from photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor). The images were processed in Photoshop CS4 using Color Efex Pro. The original and processed images are presented below.
Original
Glamour Glow
As seen in the above images, the Glamour Glow effect provides a nice warming effect to the skin tone.
Original
Bleach Bypass
In the above image, the “Bleach Bypass” filter was selected to enhance the image. The image was also cropped.
The above images illustrate two of the new filters in Color Efex Pro 3.0. These two examples, however, barely scratch the surface of Color Efex Pro’s powerful yet easy-to-control color effect tools.
Pros
Powerful color effects
Excellent video training
Cons
None noted
Training
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 Standard Edition $99.95 (15 filters); Select Edition $159.95 (35 filters); and Complete Edition (52 filters).