The pace of change within the plug-ins themselves may not be rapid (they are pretty good as they are), but DxO is constantly finding new ways to tweak the features and integrate them into a variety of different workflows. They are twice the size of regular TIFFs, but they offer non-destructive editing from any program – it's the adapted TIFF format that makes this possible. These preserve the original image, the edited image and the processing instructions used. But as of Nik Collection 3, you can also opt to create 'multi-page TIFFs' for editing in the Nik plug-ins. If you're working from within Photoshop you can create Smart Objects, which allow re-editable filter effects – so it's Photoshop doing the heavy lifting here.
But DxO has found some clever workarounds to make these 'destructive' filters 'non-destructive', though only with specific workflows. Once you've applied the effect, you can't backtrack through the settings. (Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)Įffects filters are typically pixel-based and 'destructive'. Nik Collection 3 introduced a new 'multipage TIFF' format which allowed non-destructive editing with the Nik Collection plug-ins. You can use them as external editors within any program that offers an external editor feature and you can even launch them directly as standalone programs. You can also launch the Nik plug-ins from within DxO PhotoLab 4, DxO's flagship photo editing/raw processing/image enhancement tool.
It's like an automated series of actions and opens up even more possibilities – although at this stage there are just ten Meta Presets included and you can't currently create your own. Nik Collection 4 adds a Meta Preset feature which can combine results from two or more Nik plug-ins. With this, you can not only launch each plug-in directly, but you can choose a processing preset too. If you open images in Photoshop you can launch them from here too – though DxO installs its own Nik Collection Selective Tool Panel which offers a lot more control. If you use Lightroom Classic as your digital hub, all eight can be used as plug-ins. You can fit these plug-ins into your workflow in a variety of ways.
These do now seem somewhat past their sell-by date, as you would probably carry out these jobs in raw processing software these days.
Perspective Efex fixes converging verticals and other perspective issues, while Viveza offers powerful global and local color adjustments – like dodging and burning for color images rather than black and white.īringing up the rear are Dfine and Sharpener Pro, which offer noise reduction and creative/output sharpening respectively. Perspective Efex and Viveza are more for image correction and enhancement.
Thanks to a powerful history browser you will be free to experiment with all the tools the software provides - there is no adjustment that you can make to an image that cannot be easily undone.Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro are the chief 'creative' plug-ins, offering analog film and darkroom effects, a myriad of different photo treatments, filters and adjustments, HDR merging and tonemapping tools and powerful black and white image editing and conversions respectively. Dynamic brightness and soft contrast adjustment allow you to perfect the look and feel of your images. You can selectively restore color to an object, making it visually pop out of the rest of the image. It can simulate several types of colored lens filters and can emulate many popular black and white film stocks - including popular films by Ilford and Kodak.You'll also be able to add borders to your images - perfect for wedding shooters and fine art photographers alike. While many cameras offer built in support for shooting in black and white - and any image editing program worth its salt can perform a standard grayscale conversion - simply desaturating a color image can often produce a flat and boring black and white conversion.Silver Efex Pro gives you the tools you need to bring life to your monochromatic visions. It gives you all the tools necessary to convert color images from your digital camera to stunning black and white photographs. The Silver Efex Pro 2 Software from Nik Software is a powerful plug-in application for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture.