I’m obsessed with the strange, chaotic and beautiful world of Nik Analog Efex

There comes a time to put the science to one side, to put the histograms and the eyedroppers back in their box, and to step sideways into a very strange and very different analog world. Analog Efex, part of the DxO Nik Collection, goes to places other effects tools don’t go. It’s richer, stranger and more random than just about anything else, and I love it.

To explain what I mean, I thought I’d share three completely different interpretations of the same photograph. They are all one-click ‘cameras’ in Analog Efex, part of the DxO Nik Collection. They are kind of like presets, but they incorporate many of the characteristics, flaws and randomness of old film cameras in a way that other programs don’t. Film simulations are common enough, camera simulations aren’t.

Analog Efex variation 1: Double exposure

Double exposures used to be things that happened by accident when the film wasn’t wound on properly, but they can produce strange and beautiful effects. They also evoke a simpler time of excitement and discovery, when photography was new and we didn’t know what was possible, or what our images would look like until they came back from the lab.

Analog Efex variation 2: Multi-lens

I admit that until I used Analog Efex I would never have thought of chopping an image up into panels and rearranging them. And yet, in a way I can’t exactly explain, it’s a really compelling way to present a complex scene. It’s not photography as we know it, but a different way to look at a scene.

Analog Efex variation 3: Wet plate

Analog Efex is very good at evoking the streaks and blemishes of wet plate film development. It also simulates dust, scratches, borders and textures. These are all digital effects, of course, but the way that Analog Efex presents its effects is quite different to other software. It just goes deeper and further. It does not hold back.

Why I think this matters

I spend much of my time writing about very technical processes and the scientific analysis of image properties, because it’s what a lot of photographers need help with and I’ve made it my career. But there is another part of me that longs to return to the basic cameras and kitchen-sink chemical processes of yesteryear and all their beautiful unpredictability.

Analog Efex is, in my opinion, quite unique. Other programs may present a more technically correct approach to film simulation, like DxO FilmPack, or provide a greater variety of filters to combine into image effects (ON1 Photo RAW, Nik Color Efex), but Analog Efex remains for me a tool that goes in directions other programs don’t and doesn’t really have a parallel.

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