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DxO Nik Collection

Now up to Nik Collection 5, the Nik Collection consists of eight different plug-ins, including four of the best creative tools for photographers you can buy today. Silver Efex Pro is still unrivalled for its black and white photography effects, Color Efex Pro has a dazzling array of photographic effects, Analog Efex Pro is superb at evoking classic analog film and darkroom effects and HDR Efex Pro makes HDR merging and editing easy enough for anyone to get great results straight out of the box. The new plug in, Perspective Efex, corrects perspective distortion and more.

How to use Viveza control points to transform your pictures

October 7, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Viveza control points

Viveza 2 is part of the DxO Nik Collection, but it’s often overlooked because it meets a fairly narrow need. It’s designed as a kind of colour ‘dodging and burning’ tool, where you use Nik Software’s clever control points to both mask and adjust specific areas of the photograph at the same time. These control […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, Tutorials

Have you ever tried HDR Efex Pro portraits?

October 3, 2013 by Rod Lawton

HDR Efex Pro portraits

HDR techniques are usually associated with surreal landscapes and architectural photography, but you can create HDR Efex Pro portraits for some unique and powerful effects. This works best with male subjects because it creates a dark, brooding look where every pore and wrinkle is emphasised. I’m starting with this informal photograph taken in the family […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: HDR

Exploring the Silver Efex Pro Film Noir effect

September 29, 2013 by Life after Photoshop

Silver Efex Pro Film Noir effect

Silver Efex Pro comes with a large range of varied and powerful black and white presets, and one of my favourites is the Silver Efex Pro Film Noir effect. This does every bad thing we’re told to avoid with our high-quality digital images! It reduces the sharpness of the picture, adds a hefty dose of […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Black and white, Silver Efex Pro

How to use the HDR Efex Pro merge tools

September 26, 2013 by Rod Lawton

HDR Efex Pro merge tools

Like other HDR tools, HDR Efex Pro 2 is designed to work with a sequence of bracketed exposures which cover a wider dynamic range than a single image could record. This means you need to pay special attention to the HDR Efex Pro merge tools. You’ll see these whenever you open a series of images, […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: HDR

Try out this Silver Efex Pro tutorial for subtle black and white portrait effects

September 22, 2013 by Life after Photoshop

Silver Efex Pro tutorial

Successful black and white photography sometimes gets its power from strong contrasts and graphic shapes, and sometimes it relies on subtlety and control. Silver Efex Pro, now taken over by DxO in the Nik Collection, can do both. In principle, you should be able to do all these things in Photoshop, but in practice I […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Black and white, Silver Efex Pro, Toning

Learn how to use HDR Efex Pro 2 presets

September 19, 2013 by Rod Lawton

HDR Efex Pro 2 presets

Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2 is now part of the DxO Nik Collection, but the software itself is unchanged – it remains one of the most approachable and most effective HDR tools you can get. But while the bundled HDR Efex Pro 2 presets are many and varied, you can also create and save […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: HDR

How to bring out textures with the Silver Efex Pro Structure slider

September 15, 2013 by Life after Photoshop

Silver Efex Pro Structure tool

The Structure tool is one of Silver Efex Pro‘s secret weapons. It helps to give black and white images that indefinable ‘bite’ that we’re always trying to recapture with our digital images. You can think of the Silver Efex Pro Structure control it as a kind of ‘coarse sharpening’, which acts over a slightly larger […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Black and white, Silver Efex Pro, Structure

Add drama to your shots with the Dark Contrasts filter in Color Efex Pro

September 12, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Nik Color Efex Pro Dark Contrasts filter

DxO Color Efex Pro 4 has a number of contrast enhancing filter effects which work in subtly different ways. The Tonal Contrasts filter boosts contrast within specific tonal ranges, while the Detail Extractor can be used to produce HDR style effects. And at first glance, so does the Dark Contrasts filter, though the net result […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, Tutorials

Discover the power of Silver Efex Pro Soft Contrast

September 8, 2013 by Life after Photoshop

Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 Soft Contrast

The Soft Contrast slider is one of the new features introduced in Silver Efex Pro 2, and its effects are quite different to the regular Contrast control. At first it can seem quite difficult to work out a use for it, but you’ll soon discover when you start digging around in the presets that it […]

Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Black and white, Contrast, Dodging and burning, Silver Efex Pro, Structure

Use Color Efex Pro control points to mask your graduated filters

September 5, 2013 by Rod Lawton

Color Efex Pro control points

Graduated filters are perfect for toning down bright skies, but they have a problem. Any object sticking up into the sky gets ‘graduated’ too! But Color Efex Pro control points are the answer… All the filters in Color Efex Pro have opacity control points. You can use them to hide the filter effect in areas […]

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Filed Under: Nik Collection, TutorialsTagged With: Graduated filters

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