AmateurPhotographer

SOFTWARE TEST Testbench
Silver Efex Pro 2 can bring amazing depth and richness to
black & white images – it’s like rediscovering the darkroom!
Silver Efex Pro 2
This is a powerful black & white
conversion tool that simulates
the appearance of classic fi lm
emulsions and darkroom printing
techniques with real depth and
richness. When you’ve tried
Silver Efex Pro 2 for black & white,
it’s very diffi cult to go back to
anything else.
There is a big selection of
ready-to-go presets, backed up
by comprehensive and powerful
manual adjustments. These tools
go far beyond regular black & white
controls. There is a Brightness
slider, for example, but below
that are subsidiary sliders for
Highlights, Midtones and Dynamic
Brightness, which applies an
adaptive adjustment to produce a
low-key or high-key effect, while
preserving black & white points
and full contrast.
This depth carries on through
the toolset. You can add defi nition
and ‘punch’ with a Structure slider,
apply black & white ‘contrast’
fi lters by clicking a button or
adjusting the hue and strength
precisely, and simulate a wide
range of traditional black & white
fi lms with optional control over
the spectral response, grain
(and grain characteristics) and
tone curve.
Dfine 2 and
Sharpener Pro 3
These two plug-ins stand apart
from the others because they’re
designed for routine image
corrections and enhancements,
rather than creative effects.
Dfi ne 2 is a noise-reduction
tool that uses a two-step Measure
and Reduce process. You can
use automatic noise analysis
or choose areas for analysis
manually. Its default noisereduction
settings can produce
some rather artifi cial-looking image
smoothing and a bit of loss of fi ne
detail, but you can make manual
adjustments to Contrast noise
(luminance noise) and Colour noise,
and use control points to add,
remove or reduce noise reduction
in specifi c areas.
Sharpener Pro 3, meanwhile,
takes a scientifi c approach to
sharpening, separating capture
The Contrast Color Range filter in Color Efex Pro 4 is terrific for ‘polarising’
blue skies and intensifying colours
With its sophisticated tonal controls, film simulations and
localised control points, Silver Efex Pro 2 is surely in a class of its own
sharpening (overcoming camera/
lens softness) from output
sharpening (preparing images
for different print/display devices).
The RAW Presharpener is
good at sharpening the slight
softness you see with all digital
camera images at a pixel level,
but it doesn’t have the Radius,
Amount and Threshold sliders
of a regular Unsharp Mask tool, so
it’s no good for trying to disguise
more serious blur caused by focus
errors or camera shake. You can,
however, use control points to
control the sharpening effect
in specifi c areas.
Our verdict
THE GOOGLE Nik Collection
includes some rich, complex and
powerful plug-ins, but some are
a lot more useful than others.
Dfi ne’s noise reduction looks
dated and crude compared with
the tools built into programs such
as Lightroom and Photoshop. Also,
while the Sharpener Pro plug-ins
usefully distinguish between
capture and output sharpening,
again they seem to add little to
what you can already do.
However, Analog Efex Pro 2
is extraordinary in the range of
effects it offers and the way these
can be combined. Color Efex Pro
has so much depth and control,
you may never get to the bottom
of what it can do. Silver Efex Pro is
a superb monochrome tool that
could reignite any photographer’s
passion for black & white.
Of the rest, HDR Efex Pro 2 is a
versatile and effective HDR plug-in
with some good presets but a
jargon all its own. Viveza 2 has
The Output Sharpener matches
the sharpening to the size of the
image, and the display or medium
it will be displayed on. This is
important because the sharpening
settings needed for display on a
computer monitor are very
different from those needed for an
A4 print, and different again from
a billboard poster. You then have
sliders for Output Sharpening
Strength, Structure, Local Contrast
and Focus.
It’s powerful in its way, but also
feels too specialised for the
average photographer, as
well as somewhat dated.
perhaps outlived its usefulness
since the other plug-ins mostly
have the same powerful control
point technology that’s Viveza’s
principal asset.
In reality, Analog Efex Pro 2,
Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex
Pro 2 are so good they easily carry
the weaker plug-ins. The Google
Nik Collection is worth installing for
these alone.
There are nagging concerns,
though. These plug-ins are mostly
several years old now and future
updates appear unlikely. You have
to wonder how long it will be
before Google drops them, just as
it did with the excellent desktop
version of Snapseed.
Plug-ins of this quality don’t
come along
often and
these may not
be around
forever, so
GOLD
make the most
of them now.
subscribe 0330 333 1113 I www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 14 May 2016 53