Silver Efex, part of the DxO Nik Collection is one of the best editing tools you can get for black and white photography, but the range of tools available and their interactions can sometimes be difficult to unravel. So here’s a guide to one of the most basic and effective tools of all – Film Styles. It’s often enough, even on its own, to produce rich and satisfying black and white versions of your digital images.
Check the annotated screenshot above to see what this tool does and the adjustments available.
Film Types is a basic adjustment in Silver Efex 8 which is always in the right sidebar regardless of any other filters you add. You can treat it as a starting point for all your edits or ignore it and go straight to creating your black and white effects with other filters. That said, the Film Types tool does give you a very strong initial black and white look. When you choose a Film Type from the drop-down menu, you can view and edit the Sensitivity, Levels & Curves and Original Grain properties for the Film Type.
1. Film Types menu
You can leave this set to the default ‘Neutral’ setting and apply your black and white effects using other filters if you like, but Film Styles are a good way to create an instant analog look. Once you choose a Film Type from the drop-down menu, you can inspect and edit the film’s Sensitivity, Levels & Curves and Original Grain – see below.
2. Sensitivity
Each Film Type has its own spectral ‘Sensitivity’ – in other words, how different colors translate into shades of gray. This is part of the film’s basic character, and you can adjust this directly. For example, reducing the Blue and Cyan values will make blue skies darker, as if you were using a red or yellow filter on the lens. Note that you can also do this with this with the Colour Filter, though, which is a separate tool that offers rather more control.
3. Levels & Curves
Each Film Type will already have curves adjustments applied as part of that film style, but you can adjust these directly. This works just like any other curves tool in editing software, so you can add and move control points at will.
4. Original Grain
This panel displays the grain effect applied as part of the film style. To make the grain appearance stronger you actually have to reduce the ‘Grain per pixel’ value, which is a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s how it’s done. There is also a separate Grain filter in Silver Efex, where you can select the characteristic grain patterns of different films. It’s probably best to add grain here in the Film Styles panel or separately in the Grain Filter, but not both.
