Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 Released by Nik Software

Nik Software has just released Silver Efex Pro 2. I’ve long felt that Silver Efex is the best available software for transforming color images to black and white. It’s available for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture.

The flexibility and power of the new application is very impressive. Here’s some interesting features:

Control Points – selective image edits and adjustments

History Browser - like Photoshop, you can move back and forth at will in your editing history

Structure and Fine Structure expanded/upgraded – fine structure brings out more visible detail in details and textures

GPU Processing – true 64-bit processing

Image Borders – Natural and Customizable

Selective Color – easily mix black and white and color elements in your image

Dynamic Brightness – differential brightness adjustment based on tonal values

One-Click Toning and Split Toning

At the end of the day, though, it’s the image quality that’s got me hooked. It’s not just faster, it’s better.

I’ve found that images I’ve edited using Silver Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro 2 look very good on paper, whether I’m using lustre, glossy, fine art, or canvas materials.

I’ll have a complete review by the end of next week.

For more information, go to Nik Software. You can download a 15 day free trial if you wish. You can also receive a 15% discount upon purchase,  using the code DSAFFIR in your shopping cart.

Here’s a link to my earlier review of Silver Efex Pro.

I have a workshop coming up this Saturday, Feb 26. Here’s a link to the course description:

Creating Gallery-Quality Black & White Images Using Nik Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro 2 for Photoshop

Great Class Last Night – Nik Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro

Had a very cool class on Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro last night at SCV Center for Photography. As always, Mel Carll, the owner of the studio, was a great host!

We explored these applications along with some advanced layer techniques in Photoshop – the possibilities/flexibility are really impressive – so is the improvement in productivity and editing speed! (both applications work with Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture).

I’ve written reviews of both applications, plus Nik Silver Efex Pro (for Black and White). Here’s the link for the Viveza/Color Efex article, and the link for the Silver Efex Pro article.

You can download free trial at Nik Software.

LAX at Night, © David Saffir

Review, Nik Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 3.0

Since my review of Silver Efex Pro by Nik Software, I’ve been working with some of the other software packages offered by Nik, specifically Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 3.0. Like Silver Efex Pro, these applications offer great flexibility and control during image editing. They are compatible with Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. In this article, I’ll provide an overview of the features and benefits of both.

Viveza 2 offers sophisticated both  global and highly selective editing of image characteristics, including but not limited to color, saturation, contrast,  brightness, structure, saturation (RGB or by channel), etc. And as I’ll explain further on, the edits you perform can not only be placed on a Photoshop layer, but individual edits in the application itself are non-destructive, and can be changed at will.

Color Efex Pro offers over 50 pre-designed filters, with an incredible range of image enhancements, conversions, and special effects.

I’ll cover some of the fundamentals in Viveza 2, using Photoshop. Clearly it’s not possible to explain all the combinations and nuances in this space. If you really want to get a grip on what’s possible with the software, it’s advisable to take a live workshop, like the one I have coming up on Wednesday, June 9, 6:30-9:30PM at the SCV Center for Photography. Click on the link, and scroll down a bit – the listing is in the left hand column. You can also call 661-904-2092 for reservations. (Credit cards cheerfully accepted.) Fee is $69.

(FYI, the software works in CS5 in 32-bit mode, except for Viveza 2 for Windows, which can be used in 64-bit mode. Upgrades are planned some time around mid-year.)

I’ll be using one of my recent images, taken a month or two ago during the explosion of Spring wildflowers in California.

Before Launching Viveza 2

Now I’ll go to Filters, and launch the application. The first screen looks like this:

Opening Panel

The original image is shown in the center. One can change this view to twin before/after images, or to a single image split to show the same. Here’s a closeup of the control panel on the right:

Control Panel

Note the button for “Add Control Point” (more on this later), the global controls for brightness, contrast, saturation, and structure, and at the bottom, a drop-down for levels and curves (new in Viveza 2)

Levels and Curves drop-down

I’m accustomed to making these adjustments on individual adjustment layers in Photoshop; now you have that option here. These controls operate globally as one would expect.

Now I’ve made a levels and curves adjustment, and set the screen for a side by side comparison:

Levels/Curves

I’m conservative in these adjustments, but you can see the difference in overall contrast, and in some degree, a bit of increased saturation.

You can also add what Nik calls “Control Points”, which are highly versatile tools – a Control Point (CP) can be placed anywhere in the image. Click on the CP button in the Control Panel, mouse over and left click to place the CP.

A basic CP looks like this:

Note the yellow button at the top – that slider controls the size of the CP, and how much impact it has on the image. Underneath it are control sliders for Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Structure.

Control Point Size

You can click on the small triangle at the bottom of the Control Point to reveal more options:

Now we can see controls for shadow adjustment, warmth, R-G-B, and hue. These adjustments are also available in the Control Panel.

This is one of the core concepts to this software. You can apply CPs singly, or in groups. A CP can be duplicated through the command <alt> – left click.

Once you’ve made your adjustments, you have the option of clicking OK, which will apply your changes on a new layer, or Brush, which will create a new layer with a black layer mask. You can then paint on the mask with a white brush to reveal your edits.A small Viveza panel will be present in your Photoshop screen – when finished editing the layer, click “apply”, and voila!

Later on if you want to make changes in your edits, re-open Viveza and work away. When you click “Apply” the changes will take effect.

This review just scratches the surface. I could write a book, but not today. :)

Viveza provides impressively easy-to-use, highly flexible tools for editing images in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture. Used appropriately, it can really improve and speed up your image editing.

I’ll be brief in my remarks about Color Efex Pro 3.0. Can you say, “indispensable”? It is one of my all-time favorites.

The application offers over 50 filters, presets, and such. One of my favorites is “Brilliance/Warmth” which can do wonders for landscape images. Here’s the menu in the opening panel (looks much the same as Viveza, but this menu appears on the left):

Filter and Pre-set Menu for Color Efex Pro

Also note the tabs, which organize the menu choices by task or image type: Portrait, Landscape, Stylizing, and Traditional. You can also organize your favorites under a separate tab.

One could develop many of these “looks” in Photoshop, but in the majority of cases this application makes things easier and faster – and frequently better. Here’s a side by side of Brilliance/Warmth:

Before and After - Brilliance/Warmth

I think that’s pretty cool!

NOVEMBER 16: THERE IS NOW A SPECIAL NIK SOFTWARE PURCHASE DISCOUNT CODE FOR READERS OF MY BLOG. TYPE “D S A F F I R” IN YOUR ORDER FOR 1 5 % DISCOUNT. LINK TO NIK

Manage and Archive Photos using Lightroom On-Disk Organization – Part Three

by guest author Robert Ash

Introduction

Our first installment discussed an on-disk organization method that allows you to organize your photos in a way you can use any program you choose to find and view them easily. Our second installment discussed importing your photos into Adobe ® Lightroom®.

In this article we will discuss using Lightroom to manage your on-disk organization, plus show you a folder naming practice that makes it possible to use in a clever way a powerful Lightroom 2 feature – Smart Collections.

Overview

Key principles for organizing photos in Lightroom are:

• First organize on-disk (Installment 1). Again, this will make your file organization largely if not completely independent of what file browsing or organization software you use – Lightroom, Bridge, your camera manufacturer’s or another program like Aperture or CaptureOne. It will also drastically reduce the number of keywords you need, and may even eliminate your need for keywords.
• Import into Lightroom (Installment 2). Use Lightroom to transfer your photos from card to temporary folders on disk, where they’re faster to work with. Import those temporary folders into Lightroom (Installment 2).
• Organize your folders in Lightroom (this Installment). Use Lightroom to move photos from your temporary folders to their final destinations.
• Then create Collections. Lightroom Collections enable you to store a single photo or group of photos in multiple classification categories simultaneously, using on-disk organization alone cannot do this efficiently.
• Finally, do keywording if needed.

Summary

To organize your folders and imported photos using Lightroom:

Go into Lightroom’s Folders Panel

Import photos from memory card into temporary folder 0-ImportThesePhotos

If all your imported photos in folder 0-ImportThesePhotos will go in the same destination folder, select them all. If not, then select one subset of them at a time and repeat the following steps until finished:

• Select a subset of photos
• Move your selected photos to a folder
• Go to Folders panel
• If the folder you want exists, right-click on it and choose Move Selected Photos to this Folder
• If the folder you want does not exist, create it then move the select photos to it
• Optional: Create a Collection or Smart Collection with the same name as the folder (see clever shortcut in Details section below)

Details

Import photos to a temporary folder 0-ImportThesePhotos per Installment 2 of this series. Next, use the Folders panel (left side of Lightroom’s Library module) to manage your on-disk folders. This is more efficient than using a folder browser (e.g. Windows Explorer or Mac’s file browser) to organize your folders.

Selecting a Subset of your imported Photos

In the folders panel click on your temporary folder, e.g. 0-ImportThesePhotos. You’ll see all the photos you just imported. Select some photos to put into a folder (or select them all if they’re all going into the same folder). To select all the photos from a first photo (e.g., photo_01) to a final photo (e.g., photo_50) and all the photos in between:

• Click on the first photo (photo_01)
• Scroll to the last photo (photo_50)
• Shift-Click on the last photo. All photos from 01-50 will be selected
• To skip over photos or choose photos here and there, or to un-select one, use Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on Mac) on each photo
• Your Lightroom panel should like similar to this. All the highlighted photos will be moved into the same long-term destination folder (the gray one was un-selected with Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on Mac) as described:

Moving your selected Photos to a Folder

My selected photos are from the Columbia River Highway in Oregon. I don’t yet have an Oregon folder on disk. As I shared in Part 1 On-Disk Organization, my top-level folders are Locations, Nature, People, Events, Other Subjects, Personal Projects, 0-Personal&Family. So to organize my Columbia River, Oregon photos I do the following:

• Click on Folders to reveal the Folders panel
• Click on Locations to show the Locations sub-folders
• Right-click on Locations > America-USA
• Choose Create Folder Inside ”America-USA”
• Name the folder Oregon
• Right-click on Locations > America-USA > Oregon
• Choose Create Folder Inside “Oregon”
• Name the folder ColumbiaRiverHighway

Note that we do not include spaces in the file name. That is because of a Lightroom limitation in Smart Collections (more details in next installment). I could stop here but because this is a location I’ll almost certainly visit again I’ll go down another level:

• Right-click on the folder ColumbiaRiverHighway and choose Create Folder Inside ‘ColumbiaRiverHighway’
• Name the folder 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway
• Check the box Include Selected Photos to move the selected photos to this folder
• Click on the Create button and watch it go!
• Creating a Smart Collection with the Same Name as your new Folder
• Optional but recommended. Here’s a trick to make doing that easier:
• Copy the folder name:
• Right-click on the folder 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway and choose Rename
• Right-click on the highlighted folder name 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway then choose Copy,
• Now hit Esc to cancel – the folder name 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway is now stored in memory

Here is what your dialogue box should look like when creating a Smart Collection that will automatically pull into itself all the photos in the folder you will name the Smart Collection after:

Create a Smart Collection (you can click on the ‘+’ sign by the Collections panel name and choose Create Smart Collection)

Name the Smart Collection with the folder name 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway by doing Paste into the Smart Collection dialogue box’s Name field.

• In the Set droplist, choose a Collection Set where the Smart Collection will reside or just leave it at the default value – None.
• Leave the Match droplist at its default – All. In the box below the Match droplist you’ll see a droplist that says Rating:
• Change that first droplist value from Rating to Filename
• Select Starts With in the 2nd droplist then you’ll see a 3rd droplist
• Paste the folder name 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway into the 3rd droplist and click the Create button.

Your photos from 2009ColumbiaRiverHighway should all show up automatically in your Smart Collection. If they don’t, then change the 2nd droplist to read Ends With (Smart Collections can be temperamental). Make sure you have no leading or trailing or embedded spaces or other characters in the Smart Collection name.

Moving the next set of your imported Photos – and the next….

The next subset of photos in my temporary folder 0-ImportThesePhotos is still in Oregon, but consists of photos captured while travelling south along the coast on Highway 101. To move these to the correct folder I did the following:

• Return to the Folders panel
• Right-click on the folder Locations > America-USA > Oregon
• Choose Create Folder Inside “Oregon”
• Name it Highway101Oregon (I specify Oregon because Highway 101 also goes through California and Washington – I take pictures on that highway in all these states)
• Right-click on Highway101Oregon and choose Create Folder Inside “Highway101Oregon”
• Name the new folder 2009Highway101Oregon
• Optional but recommended: Create a corresponding Smart Collection as described above. Again, more details about Collections in the next installment.

Robert Ash heads a global team at a leading technology company. He has 15 years of experience with large-scale data environments and has worked with some of the largest data warehouses in the world. All statements and opinions are the author’s own, not those of any company or other party. This approach is the author’s personal approach to photo organization. The material in his articles is not guaranteed or warranted to work for any purpose or in any environment besides the author’s. The author is not an Adobe employee.

New Series: Getting It Right In the Camera – Managing Depth of Field

We have a new guest author joining us. Ted Dayton (teddaytonphotography.com) has decades of experience as a commercial photographer, shooting celebrities, fashion, stock, product, architectural, and others with great success.

 He is one of the best photographers I know, producing work that is distinctive and meticulously crafted. He is also President of the Santa Clarita Photographer’s Association, and a graduate of Brooks Institute of Santa Barbara.

 In this article, Ted discusses Depth of Field, one of the key issues surrounding the topic of “Getting It Right In the Camera”.

__________________________________________________________________________________________  

Popular Myths About Camera Lenses and Depth of Field

There is a myth that wide-angle lenses provide more depth of field than long lenses.

I would like to set things straight, as some readers may still be believers. We tend to use wide lenses and long lenses very differently and our perception of their relative Depth of Field properties is affected accordingly.

Wide lenses seem to have more Depth of Field because we tend to use them in ways that do in fact provide a lot of depth of field. We tend to back away from our subjects so we can see a wide view of things. This distance-to-subject dynamic affects Depth of Field as much as aperture setting does.

The lens is focused closer to infinity than for close-ups, and all lenses and all aperture settings provide greater Depth of Field as the plane of focus approaches infinity. We also tend to stop down when using short lenses in order to include as much information (sharpness) as possible in support of our wide view of things. So, we think of wide lenses as providing the greatest amount of Depth of Field.

With long lenses, we tend to shoot closer to a wide-open aperture for many reasons. Stopping down requires longer shutter speeds, which lead to shaky pictures if taken hand-held. Long lenses are harder to hold still and faster shutter speeds that are accessible when shooting closer to wide-open solve the problem.

And, long lenses are great for isolating distant subjects from other elements, especially if we use them, ahem, wide open. And so we think of long lenses as producing less Depth of Field than shorter lenses because most long lens photos we take do have shallow Depth of Field.

But it isn’t so!

Try this exercise on your own: put some common object like a basketball on the table in the backyard and take pictures of it with lenses of all focal lengths. Shoot all of these pictures at the very same aperture and fill the frame the same amount with the ball in every single frame.

Look closely when you edit and you will see the same amount of Depth of Field in every frame regardless of focal length, because of two things: the aperture setting didn’t change and the size of the ball in the frame didn’t change. This test is easier to understand if you use a fairly large aperture, like f/4. If you focus on the nearest part of the ball with a 28mm or a 200mm, the rest of the ball behind the plane of focus will be equally out of focus no matter which lens you use! (note: we did not provide an image example because we feel it is important for readers to perform this exercise and see this for themselves – David)

Summary

Depth of Field is a function of aperture setting PLUS the distance from the camera to the subject. You will soon discover that aperture setting is not the only reason why backgrounds are nice and soft or too much in focus.

The relationship of the distance from:

• camera-to-subject
• camera-to-background
• subject-to-background

 ALL affect how in- or out- of focus the background appears.

 Backgrounds far away when the subject is close to the camera will be very out of focus and backgrounds close to the subject will be much more in focus.

 Said another way, the closer you get to the subject, the more you must stop down the aperture in order to see a given amount of Depth of Field. 

The farther the camera is from the subject in focus, the closer to wide-open you can shoot while still getting deep Depth of Field. As I said before, distance-to-subject has about the same effect on Depth of Field as aperture setting. How we use our lenses creates our perception that they don’t all behave the same way, but the laws of optics and 35 years of experience say that they do!

Ted Dayton, Valencia, CA

NOTE: NEW PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOPS TAUGHT BY DAVID SAFFIR – First session is Turbo Portrait Retouching, July 19, Santa Clarita, California. For more info, go here.

Managing and Archiving Your Photos

Managing and Archiving Your Photos: Part One: Organization 
by guest author Robert Ash

About the author: “Known data warehousing expert Robert Ash heads a global product management team at a leading  software company. He has 15 years’ experience working with the world’s largest data warehousing environments. His customers have won the past two awards for running the world’s largest mainstream commercial databases, plus other industry awards for data warehouse architecture and administration.”

Also an accomplished photographer,  his work has also earned high critical acclaim from top industry experts. His work hangs in company lobbies and in private collections. His online portfolio can be viewed at www.pbase.com/robertash 

Introduction

 This is first in a series of articles that will review options in managing and archiving your photos. Closely related to the overall topic of Digital Asset Management, “Managing and Archiving Your Photos” will show you options available, how to choose what is best for you, how to build a management structure with reasonable effort, and ensure that your system can be used pretty much regardless of which software you choose.

Overview  

We have all felt, from time to time, that managing our digital photos can be difficult, time-consuming and confusing. Organizing photos on disk is the first and most important step in digital asset management. I designed the method shown here to:

• Make photos easy to find, even years later
• Require minimum effort to maintain
• Provide flexibility to easily use any program you choose, or to use multiple programs (Bridge, Lightroom, etc.)
• Keep time spent embedding and updating keywording to a minimum
• Reduce computer time needed to search for an item or items

Summary

Organize images on disk the way you’ll most likely, or most frequently, want to retrieve them. Make your program reflect your on-disk structure then add the minimum additional structure needed

Details

At a fundamental level, there are two ways to organize images – time-based and subject-based.

Most writers prefer time-based organization, typically by year – create a folder for each year then sub-folders beneath it. That works if your workflow is time-based and you typically don’t need to retrieve images after you’re finished with them.

Organizing by year frequently requires duplicating your subject structure for each time period (e.g. 2008 Gorillas, 2009 Gorillas, etc.), which can be a big time waster.

 Here is my approach for working by subject:

• On your main volume or drive, create one folder Photos to hold all images. That allows full backup with drag and drop of one folder. (more on backup and storage in articles to be published in the near future).
• Under Photos create a small set of major category folders. Suggestions include Locations, Nature, People, Events, Other Subjects, Personal Projects, 0-Personal&Family. (I use 0-Personal&Family instead of just Personal&Family so that category will sort to the top of the list. )

 Here is how my largest sized category, Locations, is organized:

You might have a main folder United States, a sub-folder of California, then perhaps Los Angeles as a subfolder of California if you do much photography there and want more fine-grained division for that specific folder.

 You can also add subfolders at any time and any level you want. Just add one new folder and move relevant subfolders into it. Note that year is the bottom category, not the top one, because for me it’s the least important for look-ups and it’s placed where it makes sense for me.

 My other folders are organized like this:

• add any categories or subcategories you want or need
• Animals>Bears>Canada>BritishColumbia
• Canada>Wildlife>Bears>Grizzly>Angry Grizzlies

Strengths/Limitations

 This method drastically reduces the number of keywords needed for image look-ups because the major keywords are already the folder names. All Alaska or Lion or Sunset or Still Life or Weddings images are in a folder that is labeled with the appropriate name.

 Programs like Lightroom allow you to go to your Alaska folder or Juneau folder and see all your Alaska (Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka),or Juneau (2003, 2006, etc.) or Lion (Tanzania,  San Diego Zoo, etc.) images at once.

 Even better, you can use any program you wish to access the images easily without having to duplicate your major keywords in all the programs, as they’re included in the folder names. (I like this idea a lot – David)

 So if your main program’s catalog gets corrupted or accidentally deleted you can still find images easily.

 Finally, you only need to create each major category once (e.g. Alaska) instead of looking for Alaska in 2007, Alaska in 2009, etc. plus having to remember you didn’t go there in 2008.

 This method will not solve issues like finding all the images including Trees in Munich in Parks in 2007. No on-disk organization method can do that. That level of detail requires keywording, and the most specific the lookups the more keywords required. That requirement either marries you to one program or requires duplicating keywords.

 However, this method can still be of great help if you need to use a different program and can’t duplicate all the keywords. In that case it’s like requiring looking only through the M’s or S’s or Aa-Ae in a telephone book instead of searching the whole book for that year.

If you need to categorize by year as well then programs like Adobe Lightroom allows automation of that through “Smart Collections”, which we can explore more in the next article, Capture and Import.

Robert Ash