DxO Color Efex Pro 4 isn’t just a collection of special effects. It also has a number of powerful image-editing tools hidden amongst them, and one of these is the Levels & Curves tool. You can use this to make adjustments to your images in the same way you would in Photoshop, Elements and other […]
DxO
Paris-based software company famous for its optical research, testing systems and software. It publishes DxO PhotoLab (previously known as DxO Optics Pro), FilmPack and ViewPoint, the Nik Collection and the PureRAW RAW pre-processing tool.
Use edge burning to enhance your composition in Silver Efex Pro 2
Burning in the edges of your pictures is a great way to enhance the composition because it improves the picture’s overall contrast and helps you concentrate attention on the picture’s focal point. The point is that converting your pictures to black and white is just the start, and ‘digital’ techniques like channel mixing are useful […]
How to create a moonlight effect in Color Efex Pro 4
If you look at any old Hollywood film you’d see they had a standard technique for creating ‘moonlight’. They’d simply shoot in bright sunlight, reduce the exposure and give the picture a blue tinge. The bizarre thing was that it worked – it did give the appearance of ‘night’. Moonlight isn’t actually blue, though. If […]
How to stack filters in Color Efex Pro 4
Color Efex Pro 4 (part of the DxO Nik Collection) doesn’t just apply individual filters – you can also combine, or ‘stack’ filters to create a cumulative effect. I’ve used it here to add a warm, dreamy glow to this minimalist landscape in order to show how this stacking system works. The start shot is […]
Boost contrast with Silver Efex Pro’s vignettes
The old-fashioned art of black and white photography went far beyond the initial picture-taking. Another, equally important creative process took place in the darkroom, where the image was dodged and burned to enhance the tones and concentrate the viewer’s gaze on the subject and composition. Dodging and burning is a bit of a lost art. […]
Better sunsets with Color Efex Pro Bi-Color Filters
In the days of film you could rely on emulsions like Fuji Velvia and Kodachrome to exaggerate and intensify the colours of a sunset, but today’s digital cameras deliver a more accurate rendition… which can also be quite disappointing. This picture is a good example. Admittedly, the conditions weren’t ideal for sunsets – it was […]
Better landscapes with Color Efex Pro’s Contrast Color Range tool
Color Efex Pro 4, part of the DxO Nik Collection, is a single plug-in that consists of a huge library of special effects – these are displayed in a long vertical list on the left side of the screen. And in true Nik style, it shows you how your pictures can look before you even […]