• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Offers
  • How tos
  • Listicles
  • Explainers
  • A-Z
  • Downloads
    • Adobe
    • DxO software
    • Capture One
    • Exposure X
    • ON1 software
    • Skylum
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom
  • Capture One
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • Nik Collection
  • Exposure X
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Aurora HDR

Color Efex Pro 5 review

August 20, 2022 by Rod Lawton

Color Efex Pro 5 verdict

ROD LAWTON

Features
Results
Usability
Value

Summary

Color Efex Pro 5 has been modernized and streamlined as part of the Nik Collection 5 update, and when I thought it could hardly be any better – well it’s even better. Color Efex Pro 5 is a big collection of photographic and digital filters which can be used individually or in combination for an almost limitless range of effects. Color Efex Pro 5 replaces the old and somewhat dated interface, adds more controllable control points and DxO’s ClearView contrast enhancement. It was brilliant before, and it’s even more brilliant now.

5
Color Efex Pro 5

Color Efex Pro is one of the older plug-ins in the DxO Nik Collection and until Nik Collection 5 it was the plug-in where least had changed. It did look a little old fashioned. And yet Color Efex Pro is a remarkable set of filters and tools that never stops surprising you.

I promise you, the longer you spend with it, the more impressed you will be. If you use them on their own, the filter effects vary from essential through interesting to so esoteric you might never use them, but when you start using control point adjustments and stacking multiple filters, you discover what this plug-in is truly capable of.

The Color Efex Pro screen layout takes the now-standard plug-in format, with a list of filter effects in a vertical panel on the left, a main window which displays the image you’re working on in the middle and manual adjustment tools on the right.

What’s new in Nik Collection 5 (and Color Efex Pro 5) is the way that all this is presented. Color Efex Pro’s filters are still in the left sidebar, but those being used for the current effect are highlighted by a vertical orange bar.

The filters themselves vary in usefulness, to be fair. I’ve never used the burnt landscape look of Indian Summer, the false colours of the Ink filter or the soft-focus Duplex effect amongst others, but others might.

But some filters are near-indispensible, such as the Graduated Filters, Contrast Colour Range (brilliant for bringing out colour in landscapes), Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast filters.

Each filter has its own adjustment parameters, displayed in the panel on the right side of the screen, and – crucially – they all use Nik’s control point technology for localised adjustments (you can also find this in DxO PhotoLab, launched after DxO acquired the Nik Collection and its technologies). You click to add a control point and it adds its own mask, based on the colour values where you clicked, and which operates over an adjustable radius. You adjust the opacity of the control point with a slider to either remove the filter effect from an area or add it in.

Initially, these control points can feel a little crude and indiscriminate, but once you start moving them around, adjusting the parameters – and when you realise you can duplicate then group them – they become very powerful indeed. With just a few moments’s work you can can create subtly blended adjustments that have a very natural look and none of the harsh boundary transitions you so often get with selections in other photo editing software.

In addition, the control point adjustments used throughout these filters for limiting the effects to specific areas or objects have now been improved with Luminance and Chrominance sliders to make the masking more selective.

These control points work especially well with the Graduated Filter effects, solving that age-old problem of tall buildings or mountains jutting up into the sky. You can add one or more ‘minus’ control points to remove the darkening effect from these objects and, if this takes away too much of the darkening effect from the sky around them, you can drop in a couple of ‘plus’ control points to restore it.

Color Efex Pro 5
Color Efex Pro 5’s strength comes from its ability to combine multiple filters for a bespoke effect you can save as your own custom preset.

Color Efex Pro doesn’t just offer a list of filters and leave you to get on with it. It also offers a selection of presets for each – though it would be easy to overlook these. To the right of each filter’s name is a small button which reveals a handful of pre-configured ‘looks’ for that filter. These can save you a lot of time by showing you what’s possible and giving you a head start with the settings.

Color Efex Pro’s real power, though, likes in its filter stacking capabilities. If you find the Tonal Contrast filter has given your landscape the punch it needs but the sky is too dark, you can click the Add Filter button underneath to add a Graduated Filter effect – and you can keep adding filters until you’ve got the result you want.

After all that work, you might want to save that filter combination for use again in the future, in which case all you have to do is click the Save Preset button. These presets can now include control point adjustments, and while you’re likely to want to move the control points around for different photos, this could still save you a lot of time.

Another new feature in Color Efex Pro 5 is the ClearView control previously found in DxO PhotoLab. This can give flat-looking images real ‘pop’ in the same way as Lightroom’s Dehaze filter, but without Lightroom’s oversaturated look (if you push it too far) or increased noise levels.

Color Efex Pro 5
The new ClearView tool in Color Efex Pro 5 can give flat-looking photos a dramatic ‘lift’ without artefacts or fake HDR effects.

Color Efex Pro 5 is normally a ‘destructive’ filter, so that one you’ve made your changes you can’t go back. It’s worth pointing out, however, that DxO does offer a non-destructive TIFF workflow too. It offers ‘multipage’ TIFF files which are twice the size, but include both the original image, the edited image and the processing steps used to create it. It means that your Color Efex Pro edits can be non-destructive. You can go back and change them later.

Color Efex Pro is a bit of an unsung hero in the Nik Collection suite. It might seem like a generic and perhaps old fashioned photo effects tool, but it’s a lot more than that. The updates in Color Efex Pro 5 are a big step forward in usability and presentation, but this program was already at the top of its game.

Links

  • Nik Collection 5 review
  • Analog Efex Pro 3 review
  • Silver Efex Pro 3 review

DxO software downloads and pricing*

DxO PhotoLab 6 Elite: regular price $219/£199
DxO ViewPoint 4: regular price $99/£89
DxO FilmPack 6 Elite: regular price $139/£129
DxO PureRAW: regular price $129/£115
DxO Nik Collection 5: regular price $149/£135

• 30 day trials are available for each product and bundle deals are available.

*Check for the latest offers at the DxO store

DxO store

Related

Filed Under: Nik Collection, Reviews

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to this site

Enter your email address to subscribe to Life after Photoshop and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

Adobe Lightroom is not one program but three. You could … [Read More...] about Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?

The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Choosing the best image editing software used to be easy. … [Read More...] about The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Layers explained

Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

Layers are a central part of many photo editing processes, … [Read More...] about Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

Photo editing software does two quite different jobs. It can … [Read More...] about BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

More Posts from this Category

Mission statement

Life after Photoshop is not anti-Photoshop or anti-subscriptions. It exists to showcase the many Photoshop alternatives that do more, go further, or offer more creative inspiration to photographers.

Affiliate links

Life after Photoshop is funded by affiliate links and may be paid a commission for downloads. This does not affect the price you pay, the ratings in reviews or the software selected for review.

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Copyright © 2023 Life after Photoshop · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in