Life after Photoshop

Nik Collection

The Nik Collection is an important collection of plug-ins once published by Nik Software but then taken over by Google when it bought the company. Google then made the Nik Collection free but it has now been bought for future commercial development by DxO.

How do you create a color infrared look? Here’s the Infrared Film Filter in Nik Color Efex

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Infrared photography is fascinating because it uses light below the visible spectrum to produce ethereal black and white images and surreal false color with color films. Strictly speaking, it requires film sensitized specifically for infrared wavelengths or camera sensors with the infrared filters removed. But it is possible to achieve the same look digitally using regular color images.

How do you create a vintage look? Here’s how the Vintage filter in Nik Color Efex does it

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One of the ways to create a vintage look for color photographs is to use the color grading tools in most photo editors to shift and fade the colors to look ‘old’. You can use guesswork (or experience) but in Nik Color Efex there’s a Film Efex: Vintage filter that can give you a good head start but still lets you make your own adjustments. Here’s how it works.

What is the Bleach Bypass effect and how does it work in Nik Color Efex?

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The bleach bypass process is an old analog darkroom technique that produced characteristically punchy images with high contrast, high definition and reduced saturation. You can reproduce this effect digitally in many different programs. Here, I’m using the Bleach Bypass filter in Nik Color Efex, which is one of the easiest and best implementations of this particular look.

DxO Nik Collection 8 review

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Verdict: 4.6 stars Nik Collection 8 has some interesting new features for existing users, but mostly for those who use Photoshop as their main ‘host’ application for launching the plug-ins. Silver Efex gets a major interface overhaul, however. This is very welcome, though its actual capabilities are little changed. Otherwise, apart from some workflow tweaks, it’s business as usual for this epic plug-in suite. Frankly, the Nik Collection is already such a wide-ranging, powerful and inspiring set of photo-enhancement tools that it’s always a bit of a surprise to find DxO has found anything to improve.

Live in color, dream in black and white: Nik Collection 8 is here

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Nik Collection 8 is the annual update and refresh to the DxO Nik Collection, which consists of seven different plug-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, but which can also run as standalone applications and work as external editors for many other programs. Silver Efex gets a significant overhaul in this version, but other the big news is enhanced and updated integration with Adobe Photoshop and its masking tools.

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

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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.

I edited this black and white image three different ways and I still can’t decide which is best

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Editing processes are very selective, and different photographers will have different approaches. Even the same photographer can have different approaches at different times. Just as it’s not always easy to cull your images, it’s not always easy to decide on the best way to edit them.