#Nik collection review pro
#Nik collection review software
#Nik collection review series

One whole new feature is DxO's ClearView tool, brought over from DxO PhotoLab, and not unlike Dehaze in Lightroom вЂ“ and it's especially effective on black and white images, where contrast and drama are arguably more important than sober realism.ДxO has been especially bold with its U-point selective adjustment technology here, by moving the tiny adjustment sliders attached to each control point to the toolbar on the right hand side. The tools are largely the same, but the interface has been brought bang up to date.

#Nik collection review pro

Silver Efex Pro 3, updated for Nik Collection 4, takes a bold step forward. Both the presets and the tools capture the black and white creative process brilliantly. Black and white photography is about so much more than just the absence of color, and this plug-in seems to recapture the depth, intensity and subtlety of black and white films and darkroom processes in a way that other programs and plug-ins don't.

Silver Efex Pro has a huge reputation amongst black and white fans. (Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World) Silver Efex Pro 3 is the latest version of one of the best respected black and white tools on the market. So that's enough background вЂ“ let's take a look at these plug-ins individually to see what they do and assess how well they do it. 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 вЂ“ 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 вЂ“ 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)Д®ffects 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.

#Nik collection review series

It's like an automated series of actions and opens up even more possibilities вЂ“ 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 вЂ“ 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.

#Nik collection review software

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 вЂ“ like dodging and burning for color images rather than black and white.Д«ringing 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. (Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)ДxO Nik Collection 4 consists of eight plug-ins, some of which are for creative image effects and some for more everyday image corrections and enhancements.ДЄnalog 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.

DxO Nik Collection 4 brings major improvements to Silver Efex Pro (shown here) and Viveza, but there are workflow improvements across the board for Adobe users too.