Silver Efex Pro
by Nik Software
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List Price: Our Price: $180.44 You Save: $19.51 (10%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Silver Efex Pro
Customer Review: B&W effects for digital users that reproduce old-timey film!
Summary: 5 Stars
I started doing photography in high school and we used good old Panatomic-X and Plus-X from Kodak, D-76 or Microdol developer and we printed on silver bromide paper. In fact, I still have some of my photos and I still love the look of black and white photography.
My digital image software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 can produce a black and white effect, using the "Enhance Color" setting, or you can remove color. You can also apply filters to make a sepia effect. But what you don't see are the full range of shades of gray, nor the look of film grain, fine for Pan-X, coarser for Plus-X (a medium speed film) and very coarse and grainy for "push-process" film like Tri-X.
Nik Silver Efex Pro lets you reproduce the look of black and white processed silver film as a plug-in for your digital software. You install it into the plug-in directory on your hard drive (so, during installation, you have to go find which directory this is, the software will not automatically locate the correct folder. It's typically under the installed software folders already named "plug-in.") What gets installed is a small window that shows up when you start the editor, and you can pull it down as a filter in the Filters menu (this applies to Adobe Photoshop Elements, as that is what I tested it on.)
If you pull down the Film menu, you can see your photo change from "neutral" to the grain and contrast effects of various typical types of film and you can add photo filters like red (blocks green light, passes red light through), orange or yellow (blocks blue light) and more. These color filters are used in black and white photography to darken certain areas of the photo, typically landscape, as silver film is unevenly sensitive to the various colors of light. So, on a snowy day, you'd use a yellow or red filter to make the blue shadows darker and the sky show up dark gray rather than washed out gray.
You can also tint the photos (sepia, selenium, coffee--if you soak silver bromide paper photos in coffee, they take on a permanent brown tint, copper, and blue.) You can create vignette framing.
There is a "loupe" feature which enlarges the work area to show you grain and shading. A scale based on the Zone System of grades of gray shows you the balance. When you click on each Zone, the areas corresponding to that grade of gray are hatched. This allows you to balance your photos digitally as if you were doing Zone printing.
All in all, powerful and useful if you love black and white. Nothing in my Photoshop Elements quite does what this software plug-in can do. Recommended.
Customer Review: Silver Efex Pro---Worth the money
Summary: 5 Stars
I first tried Nik Silver Efex Pro with the FREE 15 day trial from the Nik website. It was easy to use right from the start and was able to get some dramatic effects with very little effort. I then purchased the product from Amazon who had the best price at the time. One downside is that there is not a whole lot of written instructions that come with the product so you are kind of forced to learn by trial and error. But again it is not a terribly difficult program to learn and after playing with it a short while you will soon have it mastered. There are video tutorials available on the Nik website which will get you through the basics. In my opinion, for I am far from Photoshop savvy, it was well worth the money for it does save me time.Customer Review: What is not to like?
Summary: 5 Stars
Color to B&W with ease and awesome results. Pick one of many sample previews (download more styles at Nik) and then further manipulate it as necessary; gives the user tons of control over the final image.
Customer Review: Flexible and versitile
Summary: 5 Stars
Silver Efex Pro is a powerful plug-in for Photoshop. It is fairly simple to get high quality B&W conversions, but if you want it, there is a lot of flexibility to fine-tune the conversions along many different dimensions. If you are familiar with other Nik software (I had used CaptureNX that was developed for Nikon), the learning curve on this software is pretty easy. I'm very satisfied so far.Customer Review: Easy to unleash your creative side
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this after playing around with the trial version. It is quite amazing how easy this is to use and the results that you can get. I compared some of the results to my old 35mm black and white pictures; you can produce results that are very hard to distinguish from the original. The other nice feature is that you can easily add special effects (antique, sepia, etc) and get some really special pictures. The price may be a bit high for some, but not for those who would normally take the time to spruce up their photos a bit. Highly Recommended!