John Batdorff explains his approach to using Silver Efex Pro while orienting you to SEP’s interface and rich set of creative tools. Silver Efex Pro is simply the best and most essential black-and-white plugin on the market. Plug In with Nik: Silver Efex Pro 2.
Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 How To Get The
Read on to discover how get to grips with these emulations, and how to get the most from Silver Efex Pro generally. The latest version has ten new emulations of classic black & white analogue film: Adox Silver Max 21, Agfa Scala 200x, Bergger BRF 400 Plus, Foma 100, Fuji Neopan 400, Ilford Pan 100 and 400, Polaroid 667 and 672, and Rollei 100 Tonal. It works as both a standalone program and a plug-in for Lightroom, Photoshop and more, and comes as part of the Nik Collection of editing tools. There are now myriad ways to convert and edit black & white images, but Silver Efex Pro is still hard to beat.
To benefit from the colour sensitivity filters and powerful grain-control filters in Silver Efex Pro, it’s best to make essential adjustments to your original, colour raw image in Lightroom. With its unique algorithms and an array of tools and adjustments for changes like brightness, contrast, and amplifying whites, you get total control of your digital darkroom.As mentioned, you can work with Silver Efex Pro as a standalone program as part of the Nik Collection, but to get the most of the new film emulations, and much else besides, we recommend opening it as a plug-in for your main editor, in this case Adobe Lightroom. Nik Silver Efex is the most advanced black-and-white photo software you’ll ever use. Note: If youre on.To create great black and white photos you need more than a simple desaturation tool to remove the color from an image. That works out to less than 25 a plug-in.
According to DxO, Adox Silver Max 21 was chosen for its fine grain and ability to produce deep blacks and a wide range of greys, making it useful for portraits. If you are not happy with the exposure and contrast in your imported image, you can also adjust them with the Preset Library over to the left of the main screen.The ten new Film Types are a very welcome addition Which film type to use?The choice of Film Types can be overwhelming, but as mentioned, you can try them out by hovering your mouse over the name of the film. Some other fundamentally important tools in this panel are the Grain and Sensitivity options, the Colour Filter and Selective Adjustments. The new film types are, helpfully, listed under ‘New.’ Easy enough, but remember that as soon as you hover your mouse over the name of a film type it is applied to the image, so you get a sense of whether it works.To go back to your original image without Film Types applied, click Neutral.
Agfa Scala 200x was a black & white slide film, while the Polaroid emulations are quirky and intriguing. Fuji Neopan 400, meanwhile, was originally designed for street photography and reportage. Ilford 100 and 400 offer versatility and sharpness, while Rollei 100 Tonal offers a fine grain and soft contrasts, and is popular for architecture.
The History function, found at the bottom left of the main screen under the Presets Library, is a bit over-engineered, but the slider does enable you to pedal back through the adjustments if you’re not happy with some of them.The grain, colour sensitivity and the specific Levels and Curves settings are essentially what make up these classic black & white film emulations. To the left of the top bar is the Compare button, which enables you to compare your edited version with the original when you click and hold down the mouse. Very clever indeed.The easiest way to get around the image is to use the Navigator box top right of the main screen: simply click the area you want to zoom into, adjusting the magnification accordingly to check everything over. Note also that if you increase the brightness and contrast using the Global Adjustments tools at the top of the panel, you can see the look of the grain changing at the same time. Move the Grain per pixel slider right over to the left for example, and you get a very grainy, grungy look slide it to the right and it becomes harder, increasing the contrast so the image looks sharper and ‘cleaner.’ So these tools enable you to amplify or subdue the grain structure for a particular black & white look.
Essential functions such as Brightness and Contrast are listed under ‘Global Adjustments’ (they are called ‘global’ as they affect all of the image). So don’t be afraid to experiment depending on the colours in your image, as you can get a totally different look to the original – making the blue sky in a landscape look infrared, for instance, or richer background tones.As with any editing program, there is a wide range of tools for tweaking your black & white image in its entirety. If you want to adjust the colours in the Film Types, it’s easy enough, via the Sensitivity tool: move the red filter slider to the right, anything red will get brighter, or darker to the left.
You can then adjust a range of parameters, such as contrast, brightness, structure and so on. With your image open, go to Selective Adjustments, click on Control Point and then drag it to the part of the image you want to work on – the girl’s face in our screen shot (below left). It’s an ingenious design but takes a bit of getting used to. Finishing Adjustments, right down the bottom of the panel, enables you to add vignettes, borders and other final touches.Using Control Points and a last word on PresetsGlobal adjustments are all very well but for fine-tuning specific parts of your black & white image, Silver Efex Pro uses Control Points, another of its key weapons. Use Tonality Protection, meanwhile, to keep detail in shadows and highlights, but these kind of issues are best fixed when editing the original raw file in Lightroom or Photoshop. It needs to be used sparingly, however, in order to avoid halos and other artefacts, and works best with highly detailed areas or subjects.
You also get a full copy of DxO Photolab 2 (Essential), a cut-down but effective general-purpose photo editor which also works seamlessly with the Nik programs. You can also access a Loupe and Histogram, which is right at the bottom of the screen, just above the Save option.The Nik Collection 2.3 collection comes with six other useful tools for editing and sharpening your images, but Silver Efex Pro is the only dedicated black & white editing program. As with the Levels and Curves tools in Photoshop, you can easily move the points around to get exactly the look you want, or see how the graph changes for each particular film. En Vogue and Classic are our favourites, and all can be fine-tuned as shown.You might find a lot of the Film Types are quite high contrast and while you can adjust this using Global Adjustment, it’s also wise to open the Levels and Curves graph, under Film Types. Last but not least, while the new Film Types are great don’t forget all the existing Presets in the library, top left of the main screen. It’s easy enough to duplicate Control Points by holding down the Option (Alt) key and dragging it to a new destination.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 through Classic CC 2020. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 through 2020 (apart from HDR Efex Pro 2, which is not compatible with Photoshop Elements).
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