The presets panel now offers category buttons that group presets into photographic categories–Modern, Classic, and Vintage–which make it easier to sort through the software’s huge presets library. For a program dedicated to grayscale conversion, a histogram is essential, so this is a very welcome addition. In the lower-right corner, you can toggle the Loupe control to show a new histogram instead. In the upper-left corner, a new history palette lets you work backward through all adjustments you’ve made within the plug-in. Click the figure to see a larger version.Įxperienced Silver Efex users will find two important interface additions as they browse the new version.
Silver Efex’s interface remains largely unchanged, though there are important additions scattered throughout the program. As with previous versions, you can split the preview pane to show before/after views.įigure 1. Its interface is largely unchanged from previous versions, offering a well-organized single window that provides a large preview, plus several scrolling panes of options (Figure 1). Silver Efex Pro is a plug-in for Photoshop CS3 through CS5, Photoshop Elements 6 through 9, Lightroom 2.6 through 3, and Apple Aperture 2.1.4 through 3. These improvements, along with several interface updates, make the upgrade a must-have for current Silver Efex users and for anyone else interested in black and white photography. But with the $199 version 2 ($99 for version 1 owners), Silver Efex has dramatically improved its ability to target specific tonal ranges when you apply global edits. Film-stock simulation is also included, and it’s among the best that you’ll find.
And there’s no better tool for this process than nik software’s Silver Efex Pro, recently upgraded to version 2.Īs in version 1, Silver Efex 2 has excellent global tools for controlling grayscale conversion, along with exceptional uPoint controls for localized correction. For this reason, when you convert a color image to black and white (or, technically, grayscale) you want as much control as possible over mapping different colors to the grayscale tones you want.
Different choices result in very different images. If you shoot in color and then convert to black and white using software, you can choose to represent, say, a deep blue sky as either a very light gray, a very dark gray, or somewhere in between. One reason black and white photography is such an expressive medium is that there’s no objective relationship between a color and any particular shade of gray. Pros: Fantasic new tools for global adjustments nik’s uPoint technology for selective adjustments update provides some much-needed features like a histogram, and the ability to apply bordersĬons: I didn’t find any, and I looked hard for downsides.
0 kommentar(er)
