Verdict: 4.5 stars
Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a single, user-friendly interface. The only thing is… most of the host applications you might use to launch this plug-in will have some of these tools already. On the other hand, Perspective Efex doesn’t just potentially do the job better, it does some other things that regular geometric correction tools don’t.
Pros
- Simple one-window correction for all sorts of lens issues
- Great value as just one plug-in in a whole suite
- Volumetric deformation correction is unique
- Easy and rather good tilt-shift effect
Cons
- Your host software can probably do some of this already
- As a plug-in, not fully integrated with your software’s tools
- Does not support the new non-destructive process
Perspective Efex is a really useful and definitely unexpected addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. This suite breaks down roughly into ‘creative’ plug-ins like Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro, and ‘corrective’ plug-ins like Dfine, Sharpener Pro, Viveza and now Perspective Efex.
That makes Perspective Efex sound pretty boring, but it’s not. It fixes some of the biggest visual issues with digital images. Lens distortions, including perspective distortions, can undermine your images just as much as color or exposure issues.
The thing is, if you launch Perspective Efex as a plug-in from Photoshop or Lightroom, you’re using a program that has its own lens and perspective corrections anyway… so the question is whether Perspective Efex adds anything you don’t have already.
If you launch it from DxO PhotoLab, the situation is slightly different. If you have DxO ViewPoint installed alongside PhotoLab, you already have everything in Perspective Efex right there in the PhotoLab interface already. If you don’t, Perspective Efex could save you the cost of buying ViewPoint 3, offering the corrections and effects that ViewPoint does.
What does Perspective Efex do?
Perspective Efex has a range of tools, including lens corrections via DxO lens profiles, volume deformation correction (which you won’t find anywhere else except DxO ViewPoint) for ultra-wide-angle lens effects, automatic and manual perspective corrections and a miniature tilt-shift effect.
The lens corrections may not be needed and may not even be possible. Perspective Efex will apply an automatic lens correction if it’s given an unedited image to work from, and if it has a downloadable profile. Otherwise, if the image has been edited in some way already, it won’t be possible. It sounds like there’s a lot going against it but, the fact is, if Perspective Efex can apply a correction profile to your image, it will be at least as good and quite possible better than anything your host software has got.
The volume deformation correction is very interesting. With regular correction tools, even if you fix any barrel distortion in ultra-wide shots, you will still be left with unnatural elongation of objects close to the edge of the frame. The volume deformation correction in Perspective Efex fixes this with remarkable success – the before and after images show just how much deformation has been corrected.
The perspective corrections don’t do anything that can’t (probably) do in your host software, but Perspective Efex does them very well and very simply, so you might decide it does a better job. In our example image, the Auto correction fixed the image’s vertical and horizontal distortion simultaneously, and very effectively. It did a great job with almost no effort on our part.
What’s curious about Perspective Efex is that it’s a tool devoted to making images optically faultless… and then it offers a faux blur effect to make them ‘imperfect’! The Miniature effect uses a well established ‘double blur’ technique to make scenes look like tiny models. A central strip of the image remains sharp while the rest is progressively blurred to look like the shallow depth of field you get with a macro lens an a miniature subject.
Lots of programs offer similar tilt-shift effects, but Perspective Efex does it so simply, easily and effectively, you might prefer this over all the rest.
Incidentally, it can also be used as a standalone program. It does not appear to open RAW files but it can open and correct JPEG images, has its own internal folder browser and has a ‘Save as’ option for saving corrected images as new photos.
Verdict
Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a single, user-friendly interface. The only thing is… most of the host applications you might use to launch this plug-in will have some of these tools already. On the other hand, Perspective Efex doesn’t just potentially do the job better, it does some other things that regular geometric correction tools don’t.
The only thing stopping this plug-in from getting a full five-star review is that a lot of the things it does are things you can probably do already. It does not support DxO’s interesting multipage TIFF format in this version at least, so your edits are final.
Nik Perspective Efex review
Summary
Perspective Efex Pro is a mixture. It things your host software can probably do already, though it perhaps does them a little better. But it also corrects volumetric distortion, which is unique, and offers a very good tilt-shift miniature effect, which you can’t do in Lightroom, for example. As one-eighth of the Nik Collection it works out at a cost of just $10-15, which is pretty good value!
