06 Toning effect
Finally, I’ve noticed that the Film Noir 1 effect has a subtle toning effect applied. This is in the Finishing Adjustments panel too, and I’ve expanded the Toning Adjustments panel and slightly increased the Saturation value.
07 The finished image
There are two things I really like about Silver Efex Pro. The first is that the look of its black and white conversions is, to me, far more authentic than anything you can achieve manually in Photoshop – or at least without vastly more effort and expertise. The second is that its presets are so ‘unrestrained’. There’s nothing subtle about them, and that’s good, because they show you just what your image could look like. It helps you think (and see) outside the box.
The Film Noir effect is one of my favourites because it sidesteps all the tediously technical ideas of ‘quality’ now associated with digital cameras, and delivers a dense, powerful and gritty look which has real visual impact. I think maybe we’ve got so used to staring at histograms and pixels, we’re in danger of losing our basic visual sense.