Nik Software review

April 4th, 2010

NIK Software…..

It’s been a few weeks since our last review, and as promised this review is about some of the most impressive software available for digital photography.

NIK Software Inc. is a multi award winning company and has a package program that is used as an add-on for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture. The complete package contains the following programs; Viveza, Colour eFex, Silver eFex, Dfine and Sharpener.

Our review will cover each of these amazing plug-ins.

Viveza.

One of the most difficult situation hitting digital photographers today, is making changes to specific areas and colours. Today when using Photoshop we are required to use layer masks, well not anymore. Nik Software Viveza is the answer to all of our prayers. This incredibly simple and powerful program allows us to make changes to saturation, brightness, contrast, hue, warmth, reds, greens and blues to those specific colours and it’s done so painlessly. Nik Software uses a technology called U-point first found in the Nikon Capture NX software. It allows us to add a control point to make our changes.

The image above shows the basic outlay of Viveza. You have a number of different preview options the brush option will allow you to pick your control point and head back into Photoshop and brush your choice of changes without setting up masks.

You will notice in this image I have made a change in saturation to the sky, the change is extreme and is done to show the effectiveness of the program. Once the control point is set on the colour we want to adjust, it’s as simple as altering the size of the circle covering the area to be adjusted. Then using the sliders shown to make the changes to the set colours we want to alter, Loupe view then shows us the before and after.
This is an amazing program and one that I would recommend having for saving time when trying to make those alterations to your images with Adobe programs and Aperture.

Silver eFex

The next part of our NIK Software review is on Silver eFex.

If you are finding that Photoshop and other programs are giving you very predictable results when converting your images to black and white but want something more, this program will interest you. Silver eFex opens a world of very cool and fun ways to make your images really pop. The options in this program are a little more complicated than Viveza, but it’s worth every second that you spend learning how to use it and it still is not difficult to use.

Once you have opened your image, the first thing you will notice is the way the options are set out. On the left are some nice pre-set choices and to the right are the more detailed options. The options on the left are as simple as they would appear to be, the fun begins when you start to play with the options on the right.

The image above shows the spilt view, this offers the before and after image.

This image above is the immediate change we get when using the ‘Holga’ filter. You can now see on the right hand side those finer details I have been talking about.

One of the really cool option we have is changing the film type. You will notice on the drop down menu on the right, a list of film types all having a different impact on the photograph. The other option that I like in this program is the vignette, it gives a great effect and lots of control.

This is a fantastic add-on for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture. I would highly recommend getting this.

Colour eFex

This is the one NIK add-on that I use more than any other. This is a truly amazing piece of work. This one add-on would save me more time when working on images than any other I have tried. This program has some totally unique options that work incredibly well.

In the image above, going from left of the picture to the right: Group tabs will allow you to pick a filter that relates to the style of image you are editing i.e. ‘Wedding’ ,when you click the ‘Wedding’ option tab it will show a list of quick filters that relate to wedding photography. Next to the tabs you will notice a list of filters that we can pick from. In the middle, obviously we have the image, that can be viewed in a number of ways (my choice here is ‘split view’). To the right we have some options to make those finer changes, and every filter offers different options.

In the image above, you will notice that we have gone for a ‘Graduated Filter’, you can also now see how the options on the right have changed to something specific to the filter type we are using. I am able to make changes to the colour of the filter in the Colour Set option. Opacity….well that kind of speaks for itself. In fact, if we look through the options, we will see just how easy it is and simple these options are laid out.

Dfine

How many images have you deleted due to the amount of noise you have had in them? If you had Dfine at the time you were going to hit the delete button you would probably have thought twice about it.

Dfine is one of those add-ons that we probably wouldn’t use a great deal, but when we do, we get a quick reminder of how powerful it is.

Again as with the other add-on’s from NIK Software, it is incredibly easy to use.

The image below was taken at a recent wedding. I had a bit of extra Photoshop work done and then had the noise added to give the image a bit more of an arty feel. So, seeing that I had added so much noise, I felt that it would be a great image to use to show how good this program is.

This split view shows just how well this program works.

We still have the use of control points to focus on specific colours as with all the NIK Software programs. Even if you did nothing other than open an image in Dfine and then hit ‘OK’, you will be amazed at the results.

Sharpener

The final part of this review covers the sharpening plug-in from the NIK Software package.

I don’t tend to do much sharpening to my images in, I try to get my images sharp in camera. On the odd occasion however I do need to add that little something to make an image sharpness stand out and that is when I call on Sharpener Pro 3.0. This plug-in has a couple of immediate options for sharpening: Output allows you to make changes to your jpeg files after your camera has worked it’s magic. Raw is a pre-sharpening tool, allowing us to sharpen from start to finish. Mostly used by photographers that have their cameras sharpening features turned off. I prefer to use the ‘Output’ option.

Once you have your image opened in ‘Output’ you have the usual options of adding a control point and then choosing a colour range (if that’s what you prefer to do). Or you can start sharpening the entire image. The snapshot below shows an extreme of how powerful this add-on is. Again in the viewing option we can get a split before and after view.

I have taken the sharpening slider just about as high as it will go so you can see how well this works. The amount of control available is fantastic.

To conclude my review. This really is one of the most simple and powerful add-on’s for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture. Any one that is looking to save some time and have a world of filters when editing photographs, would highly benefit from the NIK Software package.

This set certainly deserves 5 stars and is highly recommended.

This package is available from our friends at Camera Electronic, usually sold for $799.00 rrp. Mention this review and get $100.00 off the rrp giving you this incredible all in one package for $699.00.

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