Comments on: Nik Silver Efex Pro 2: Review and Basic Workflow

By: David Saffir

David Saffir — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:31:24 +0000

I’m not really sure I understand your question. “I.E” refers to internet explorer or something else? Silver Efex Pro 2 – looks as if the soft proof was not applied – are you sure you’re not seeing an effect from an automatically applied preset? because I personally don’t see the bright/contrasty issue you are referring to.

By: troymullens

troymullens — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:52:00 +0000

Great review.

By: Kenn

Kenn — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:26:16 +0000

SEP2 for me does not always have immediate response but its lag is not that bad . Once I have SEP 2 open and a running a minute or so it responds fairly quickly.. and as for the quality of what I can accomplish it is amazing . My black and white conversions are so much better than what I was able to accomplish with just photoshop . IT is much quicker and easier to achieve a great result . I use this all the time .

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:12:00 +0000

Very helpful and detailed review – your workflow information is particularly useful.

By: Enrique

Enrique — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:31:57 +0000

Thank you for an excellent and useful review. Your discussion of workflow is most useful as it helps us newbies get organized when working with SEP and its myriad of features.
Enrique

By: Lois Bernard

Lois Bernard — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:24:12 +0000

I tried it, love it, forgot about the burn edges adjustment but love the split screen, history, film types, just all of it. Now to get the money to buy it!!!!

By: Guy

Guy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:05:12 +0000

Marshall: I’m not experiencing slowness with SEP2. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro with 8gb RAM, running in 64 bit mode, and SEP2 zips right along. Just ran it on an image from Lightroom — a Canon RAW file from a 5D Mk II — and responses to sliders were instantaneous; saving the file was about 2 blinks.

David: Great review that actually explained to me a couple of things that I hadn’t quite figured out yet. One feature I’d like to see in the next version, though: selecting a zone would mean that all adjustments made with the sliders affected only the zone. That would be a lot faster than generating a dozen different control points to cover the zone!

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:11:12 +0000

I have not found SEP2 slow — I have not noticed a difference between 1 and 2, I should say. It is not blink fast, but the speed is not a hinderance; however, I cannot say the same about Viveza 2, which is the slowest software I have ever used. You mention other Nik software and I wondered if you experienced speed issues with any other software titles or maybe our systems just don’t like these particular titles. I own all Nik’s titles and find them all amazing, despite this one issue.

By: David Saffir

David Saffir — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:39:13 +0000

generally retouching is completed after color correction and other adjustments, and before conversion to black and white. I use Photoshop for portrait retouching; additionally, I sometimes use the other Nik plugins.

By: Rick Holt

Rick Holt — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:36:41 +0000

I am curious when you do your retouching work in this workflow. Are you using photoshop for retouching or other software. Thanks

By: David Saffir

David Saffir — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:36:23 +0000

there are quite a few examples of both portraits and landscape on the Nik web site.

if you do decide to buy from them, I have a discount code for you that will save you 15%: use DSAFFIR in the checkout dialogue – this will work for any Nik product, far as I know.

have fun!

David

By: dafeo

dafeo — Thu, 05 May 2011 12:56:46 +0000

As someone that doesn’t really “see in B&W” it’s something I’ve meant to try out. Will install the demo/trial when I have free time…..
I like the fact that you used a portrait as an example as so many others tend to go for landscapes while I shoot mostly portraits.

Some more examples would have been nice but sure I could try to source these elsewhere.