Almost all the software applications reviewed and described on Life after Photoshop are available as a free trial, and here are the links. I always recommend using the trial version before making your mind up.
Nik Collection
The Nik Collection is an important collection of plug-ins once published by Nik Software but then taken over by Google when it bought the company. Google then made the Nik Collection free but it has now been bought for future commercial development by DxO.
See related articles below and read the full DxO Nik Collection review
The DxO Nik Collection non-destructive workflow and how it works
The DxO Nik Collection 3 brings non-destructive editing to the Nik plug ins for the first time. This is how it was done, and what you need to know.
Nik Collection presets: Even on a Cloudy Day (Color Efex Pro)
You can learn a lot from experimenting with manual adjustments and individual filters in a program like Color Efex Pro, but you can learn even more by dismantling a preset to see how its individual parts work together.
How to get started with Analog Efex Pro
Analog Efex Pro is one of the plug-ins in the Nik Collection. It works as a plug in with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it can also work as a standalone program or as an external editor with all sorts of other programs like Capture One, Exposure X and more. It’s designed to recreate the […]
Nik Collection tips: image effects, ideas and insights for the Nik plug ins
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.
How to get started with Silver Efex Pro
Silver Efex Pro is one of the best-known plug ins in the Nik Collection and widely regarded as the premier tools for fans of black and white photography. There are lots of really good ways to create black and white images in all sorts of software, but even now Silver Efex Pro has a magic […]
DxO Perspective Efex review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a simple, user-friendly interface.
Free Analog Efex Pro presets (and how to install them)
Welcome to the fourth and final part of this mini-series on Google’s brand new film and camera simulation plug-in, Analog Efex Pro. It joins the existing plug-ins in the Nik Collection, now owned and distributed by DxO. Note: Following many requests, I’m republishing this article with the download link restored but the content unchanged. This […]
Using HDR Efex Pro for everyday enhancement
Usually, HDR images are pretty obvious. The technique is part of the ‘look’. But it’s also possible to use HDR to enhance regular images to add depth and drama, but winding the effect back just a little so that it’s no longer center stage. So for this shot I used DxO PhotoLab and HDR Efex […]
Hand coloured black and white with a bi-colour filter
It does seem a bit perverse, adding colour to a black and white image which used to be colour in the first place, but hand-coloured (or digitally-coloured) black and white has a very particular ‘look’ that colour images just don’t have. So this image (below) is one I originally shot in colour but then reworked […]