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Monochrome Conversions - Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2008

Adobe CS3 RAW file handler. Note the influence on the grass, rendered dark in the top example and light in the lower example. The red line highlights the slider that has been changed

It is against this backdrop that Nik Filters introduce Silver Efex pro. In a nutshell they have taken all the techniques that are around, added a few more and then wrapped the package in an interface that includes their fabulous U-Point technology.

The key features, highlighted in the press release, are quoted as:

U Point technology - U Point powered Control Points enable you to selectively control the tonality and contrast of an image without the need for any complicated selections or layer masks.

State-of-the-Art Grain Engine - a revolutionary new grain engine that truly mimics the silver halide process and creates the highest quality black-and-white images possible from scanned or digital colour photographs.

Film Emulation - a comprehensive collection of 18 emulated blackand-white film types, including the grain, colour sensitivity, and tone curve for each.

Advanced Stylising - one-click adjustments can be made from a choice of over 20 pre-set styles from nostalgic processes like the Ambrotype and tintype to classic artistic renderings, trendy high contrast, soft focus or grainy images that emulate the most popular film types and shooting styles.

Image 1. The standard interface. The pre-sets are shown down the left-hand side of the screen. The top controls on the right are for brightness, contrast and structure. These may be applied via the unique UPoint Technology to control where they take effect.

Image 2. It is possible to control the grain of the image to mimic a wide range of silver film (Pan X, T-Max, FP4, etc).

Image 3.

The infrared conversion pre-set is one of the better ones we have seen and very easy to apply for non-experts in Photoshop.

It is interesting that Nik make very little of the features that are duplicates of what Photoshop already does.

The filters work in both 8-bit and 16-bit in both RGB and CMYK. They do not work with greyscale digital images. This is not as daft as it sounds for you might be tempted to try material scanned from a monochrome negative.

What actually happens is you are shown an error message. However, if you convert to an RGB file (still a black and white image of course) then Silver Efex becomes available again. The monochrome complementary filters (orange, red, yellow, etc) do not work for there are no colours to leverage the luminances with but, other than that, most other things work quite well, including the 'traditional' coloured toning techniques.

• Monochrome Conversions - Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro page 1
  
• Monochrome Conversions - Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro page 2
  
• Monochrome Conversions - Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro page 3
  

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