• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Organizing
  • Editing
  • Explainers
  • Photo-editing A-Z
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom Classic
  • Capture One
  • Nik Collection
    • Analog Efex
    • Color Efex
    • Silver Efex
    • HDR Efex
    • Viveza
    • Sharpener
    • Dfine
    • Perspective Efex (retired)
  • DxO PureRAW
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Exposure X

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

September 12, 2013 by Rod Lawton

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 is a darker looking image…

  • DxO Nik Collection 6 review
  • More Nik Collection news and tutorials
  • Nik Collection free trial and shop

I’ve tried this out on lots of different pictures, and I’ve decided the best way to characterise this filter is to think of it as an ‘adaptive darkening’ filter. It applies a darkening effect to the highlights and the shadows (not so much the midtones), but in a localised way, so that you still get strong outlines and a good overall tonal range – and you also get an HDR style ‘glow’ effect, which is typical of software tools that use gradual masking effects for localised adjustments.

Reading that back, it does sound rather abstract and technical paragraph, so perhaps the best way to illustrate the effect of the Dark Contrasts filter is to try it out on some examples.

Nik Color Efex Pro Dark Contrasts filter

I’ll start with this one. I took it on a blustery, stormy day, and I’d like to accentuate that feeling with a denser, more dramatic treatment. This also happens to be the ideal type of picture for the Dark Contrasts filter because it contains quite a lot of medium-sized detail which will really benefit form this filter and also help disguise the ‘glow’ effect you get as a by-product.

01 Choose a preset

Nik Color Efex Pro Dark Contrasts filter

The Dark Contrasts filter has just three default presets, and the ‘Saturated and Detailed’ preset looks the best for this shot. I’ve also used Color Efex Pro’s side-by-side before and after view (use the button on the top toolbar, circled) so that the original image is displayed alongside.

02 Don’t hold back

Nik Color Efex Pro Dark Contrasts filter

I’ve found that strong settings often work best with this filter – otherwise, you can end up with a kind of watered-down HDR effect that doesn’t look very realistic. Here, I’ve pushed the Dark Detail Extractor, Contrast and Saturation sliders right up to maximum, and increased the Brightness until the image looks just about right. This has left the sky looking a little overprocessed, but there is a solution…

Related

Pages: Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Filed Under: TutorialsTagged With: Color Efex, DxO, Nik Collection

Rod Lawton has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor (N-Photo), channel editor (TechRadar) and Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. He is now working as an independent photography journalist. 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 in 2025?

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 in 2025?

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 © 2025 Life after Photoshop · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK