Silver Efex Pro 2 to process color photos

[tcom]

Hi

I started using the Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to process color photos. For those interested, I wrote a short article showing how to use this plugin for black & white conversions on color photos under http://ipaimpress.com/silverefexpro/.

[Pacerr]

Silver Efex is as close as I've come to the B&W wet darkroom experience (and MUCH less smelly, too!). The scope and range of tools is excellent and the pre-sets are actually very representative of the film effects they replicate.

Using Vivesa to independently tweak the color in small areas of the image prior to conversion is also quite effective and is like using multiple B&W filters to selectively tune the image. Note that this effect is equally available via the B&W filter tools in Silver Efex, It's just that I was so used to evaluating the color filtration in the camera that I often do it out of habit with Vivesa as I sort and tag color originals for conversion.  Color tweaks are saved into one temporary bin and B&W tweaks are saved into a separate B&W working stack.

The U-Point tool is common to both programs. For those that haven't tried this, it's the equivalent of using multiple, hand-masked adjustment layers without the hassle.

The 30-day trials and web tutorials for the Nik plug-ins are great for evaluation.

H2

That's an excellent finesse of the Eurofighter, Dominique.

[tcom]

I am already more than pleased with Silver Efex Pro, beside offering the perfect range of tools for B/W conversion, it can also help to enhance color photos as I described in the mentioned article.

But experimenting and using Silver Efex for quite some time now on color photos, I am definitely tempted to give a try at Viveza and Color Efex. I hope being able to compare both tomorrow at a photo fair here in Switzerland.