Silver Efex - Opinions

[Barefoot]

Without going into as much detail as I did on my opinion of NikSoftware's Capture NX2, all I have to say about SilverEfex is...If it's Nik, then it's slick.

[F8&Bthere]

I know this thread is primarily about Silver Efex but for anyone considering the Nik Software bundle, the Color Efex Pro plugin has a popular filter called Pro Contrast, and one of the things it does is removes any colour cast from your image. And it seems to do this automatically, at least it did for me, on its default settings. And even though I am using a calibrated monitor, using this filter exposed a greenish yellowy colour cast I had in images captured with my Pentax K10D that I hadn't noticed before. But when I compared before and after it was obvious. And I then read that this is a fairly common thing for Pentax DSLRs. So with this, I was able to calibrate Lightroom to remove this cast and set it as a develop default to be applied upon import of all images from that camera. This is just so that I don't have to process every one of my images with the filter.

Color Efex has some other neat filters too, like film types and grain, a fog filter, graduated filters of various kinds, polarization, and one that adds an adjustable vignetting blur that kinda simulates the look of a Lensbaby.

[Marko]

Thanks for the comments everyone - I'll give it a try!

[Marko]

Ok everyone I've tried it for a half hour and it's very very cool for people like me that dig precise b/w control. Emulating film grain is also cool. control points for local contrast control not bad at all for quick play. Overall, it rocks!

[AcadieLibre]

Did you convert to Jpeg or another file format like .psd, .tiff, ect. I have the whole set of Niksoftware, I get a seat for from a friend who does Graphic Art and they always have a few extra seats and feel sorry for this starving artist and give me one of the seats and I have that program and also would like to try it as I was was unaware I even owned it lol. I have not toyed with PS much since I went to photography full-time, I used to use PS a lot for when I did Graphic Art, so I like to play with it just to keep familiar with PS just so I can keep up on the changes and make sure I don't forget how to use it. Like what happened with flash, sure I would pick it up quickly but moving from flash altogether when HTML 5 comes out and you can get away with out having to use flash. Anyway .... I have most of those plugins for Lightroom should I want to convert to B&W and add film grain from a whole range of film types. Like to see if it is as good or better. In lightroom I can do the changes while working it RAW.

[kat]

I use my Raw file. The nice thing about it is that it does come back as an other layer (new,, not to sure how you word it) when you accept the thing you want.

[Marko]

I used RAW as well and it works as Kat says.

My biggest gripe and it actually IS a gripe....is that I can get to a final stage VERY quickly using this software.

For me, believe it or not, I like the journey; I like the struggle.

I like dissecting an image and carefully deciding how much contrast it needs, which areas need dodging and burning.... I come from the darkroom world where a 4 hour printing session would normally get me 3-4 prints (11x14 inches fibre based) of the SAME image.

With this software there is MUCH less struggling and If I spent 4 hours...I could probably finish 20 different prints.

At the end of the day, the silver-effex image would likely outshine my b/w printing. But I likely would feel less satisfied with it.... time will tell.

For older world photogs like me....there's something tangible about doing the majority of the work yourself versus the computer doing the majority of the work. (and I know I've said this all before )