The best Nik Collection plug ins are so deep you might never completely get to the bottom of what they do. Here’s a series of tips and ideas for Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro, Analog Efex Pro and Viveza. This list uses an experimental new filtering system to help you find the tips you’re looking for, so hopefully it proves useful!
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• Make colors distinct with Contrast Color Range [Color Efex Pro]
This filter is a unique way to boost colors in an image without conventional saturation or vibrance increases. Instead, it increases the contrast or saturation differences between colors, which makes them look stronger in a very impactful way. More
• Use Color Efex Pro Recipes [Color Efex Pro]
The real power of Color Efex Pro lies not in its individual Filters but in the way they can be combined endlessly in Recipes – and you can create and save your own Recipes alongside those supplied as standard
• Graduated Filters and tall objects [Color Efex Pro]
Digital graduated filters, like the real thing, darken everything above the horizon, and not just the sky by any tall building or other objects that extend into it. So what you can do in Color Efex Pro is use an Opacity Control Point to remove the filter from objects or areas where you want the graduated effect removed. More
• Graduated filters in Silver Efex Pro [Silver Efex Pro]
Silver Efex Pro doesn’t have a graduated filter tool for darkening skies, but you can use the Burn Edges tool in the Finishing Adjustments panel instead. If you just burn the top edge, then adjust the Strength, Size and Transition, you can get the same effect as a graduated filter.
• Soft Contrast in Silver Efex Pro [Silver Efex Pro]
Silver Efex Pro has a regular Contrast adjustment, but also this one. Soft Contrast increases produce a dark, soft glow around objects as well as a general contrast increase, but Soft Contrast reductions are more interesting because they lighten shadows and darken highlights – it produces a subtle HDR effect than can nicely balance up images which are a bit too contrasty. More
• Use the Detail Extractor as a magic bullet [Color Efex Pro]
The Detail Extractor in Color Efex Pro can work magic on all sorts of images. It makes objects stand out more clearly, it brings out shadow detail and it brings more texture and depth to highlights. It’s like a simple HDR effect, and small adjustments can be both subtle and effective.
• Finish with a border [General]
Borders or frames are a great way to finish off a picture, and you’ll find a wide selection in Silver Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro – but don’t add them until you’ve finished any cropping, straightening or perspective correction and you know what aspect ratio you need for your print or for the place your picture is going to be displayed. More
• Color filters in black and white [Silver Efex Pro]
You can use color filters in Silver Efex Pro (and other plug ins) to replicate the effect of red, yellow, green and other filters in black and white, darkening some tones while lightening others. Be careful of pushing it too far, though, because the individual color channels in digital image can contain a lot of noise and other artefacts that are exaggerated by too much ‘channel’ manipulation of this type. More
• The Tonal Contrast filter does more than you think [Color Efex Pro]
Tonal Contrast, what’s that? It sounds like a tool for adjusting contrast in the shadows, midtones and highlights, but it does rather more than that. It actually appears to improve definition and local contrast, and acts like a very smart ‘clarity’ filter that’s more effective and controllable than many modern day equivalents. More
• Add drama with Dark Contrasts [Color Efex Pro]
The Dark Contrasts filter in Color Efex Pro is worth persisting with. Initially, it delivers rather dark, over-processed looking pictures, but if you experiment with the Brightness and Contrast settings, and use Opacity Control Points where the effect is too strong, it can add some very effective drama to a scene. More
• The Structure slider has hidden depths [Silver Efex Pro]
Silver Efex Pro introduced a Structure slider long before it appeared in other software, and we now know it as a very useful tool for enhancing the appearance of detail and object edges. But this slider has hidden depths – if you click the disclosure arrow you’ll find you can adjust the Structure separately in the shadows, midtones and highlights.
• Start with an HDR preset [HDR Efex Pro]
You can create HDR effects from scratch using the manual sliders in HDR Efex Pro, but as usual with HDR software, their effects and interactions can be unclear – so you might find it quicker and simpler to pick a preset you like the look of and then work backwards from that if you need to tweak the appearance. The two ‘Deep’ presets are quite nice for this.
• Sepia is not the only tone! [Silver Efex Pro]
Toning a black and white image can give it an extra depth and intensity, but it doesn’t have to be sepia. Silver Efex Pro offers an excellent range of toning effects in its Finishing Adjustments panel, and you can spend a few interesting minutes just trying out the variations – and there is a knack to nice-looking toning effects that Silver Efex Pro has and that a lot of other programs just don’t seem to get quite right. More
• Single-image HDR or brackets? [HDR Efex Pro]
It’s good practice to shoot a series of bracketed exposures and merge them in HDR Efex Pro to get the widest possible dynamic range, but very often the brightness range in a scene can be captured in a single RAW file, which gives you far fewer problems with ghosting and alignment (well, NO problems). More
• Try HDR Efex Pro for male portraits [HDR Efex Pro]
It won’t work with every subject, and you will probably need to tone down the settings a little, but HDR Efex Pro can add some real grittiness and drama to portrait shots. More
• Dodging and burning… in color [Viveza]
Viveza doesn’t offer the creative presets of other Nik plug-ins and at first glance its control point adjustments seem no different to those in the other plug-ins. It looks a bit limited. In fact, though, it can be a really effective tool for making no-fuss local adjustments and enhancements in a clean and simple environment. More
Glamour Glow isn’t just for glamour [Color Efex Pro]
This is one of the filters in Color Efex Pro and the name suggests it’s designed for portraits. It’s very effective at this.. but it’s also very good at adding a dreamy, romantic look to all sorts of pictures, including landscapes, for example. More
• Silver Efex Pro film Sensitivity settings [Silver Efex Pro]
You can use the Color Filter panel in Silver Efex Pro to create the effect of different black and white filters, but you can do the same thing in the film sensitivity settings, where you can choose how the ‘film’ responds to different colors of the spectrum. Rather than applying a red filter, for example, you could create a more red-sensitive ‘film’. More
• Simulating infra-red films [Color Efex Pro]
Color Efex Pro has a rather good Infra Red filter effect that can simulate both black and white and color infra red films. Only specially modified cameras can record true infra red, but this filter works with the colors that have been recorded to produce a very realistic simulation. More
• ‘Relight’ your subject [Color Efex Pro]
Sometimes your subject just doesn’t stand out, and sometimes there’s a quick and simple little fix that might just make the difference. You can use the Darken/Lighten Center filter to spotlight your subject and tone down its surroundings – you can move the center of the effect to where you need it and adjust the size and strength too. More
• Create, save and share presets [Analog Efex Pro]
Analog Efex Pro has a large number of filters and controls, and endless permutations for combining them, so it makes sense to save the effects you’re most please with as presets. But you can also export presets and share them with other people, and import presets shared by other people. More
• Try out the Zone System! [Silver Efex Pro]
The Zone System was made famous by Ansel Adams. It’s a way of visualising shades of gray as ‘zones’, and Silver Efex Pro offers a ‘zone’ display under the histogram. You can click on these zones to show them as shaded crosshatched areas in the image as you apply adjustments. More
• HDR Efex Pro can do regular enhancements too [HDR Efex Pro]
HDR doesn’t have to be all spectacle and drama. You can use it more subtly to ‘tone map’ and enhance any scene where there’s a little more contrast than you would like. It can be very effective in landscape, photography, for example, and particularly in scenes where the sky is an important part of the scene. More
• Add color to black and white images [Color Efex Pro]
If you have a largely monochromatic image which needs a little lift, try the Bi-Color filter in Color Efex Pro. This blends a gradient of two different colors from the top to the bottom of the image, via a drop-down menu of presets. It works especially well with silhouettes against skies. More
• Where are the best old photo effects? [Color Efex Pro]
You might imagine Analog Efex Pro is the best tool for old photo effects, but it’s not the only option. the Old Photo filter in Color Efex Pro has a rather good range of both black and white vintage looks, and while they don’t offer the variety of Analog Efex Pro, they include a number of really interesting looks that Analog Efex Pro does not have. More
