The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques [Paperback]

Joshua D. Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0470287632 | ISBN-13: 978-0470287637 | Edition: 1

Designed to save time in the digital workflow, Nik Software's entire suite of products (Dfine 2.0, Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Sharpener Pro 2.0) were conceived with the single goal of helping photographers use products such as Adobe Photoshop easier while offering numerous editing capabilities not found within Photoshop. These powerful and highly successful digital imaging products have been written about extensively in trade magazines and publication's, however, to date no one has taken on the task of compiling techniques into a book on how best to utilize these highly popular products. The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource of Professional Workflow Techniques is a product designed to resemble the way photographers think. The idea is to make sure the readers can apply techniques discussed in the book such as retouching, understanding the importance of light, and exposure, while learning all of the features and functionality of this family of products. The CD included with the book will have a trial version of Nik's most popular program, Color Efex Pro Standard Edition.The book will appeal to any and all owners of Nik Software products who have been asking for a book on this topic almost since the company's inception.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Smooth out and rev up your workflow with these Nik Software tools

Improving your workflow helps you succeed as a photographer. Nik Software has created these award-winning plugins, designed for seamless interaction with Adobe® Photoshop®, to manage specific, time-consuming aspects of image processing. Illustrated with vibrant full-color images, this book is the only official guide to getting the maximum benefit from each tool.

• Learn to selectively control color and light without layer masks using Viveza (also available for Apple Aperture 2.1)

• Measure noise and selectively reduce it with Dfine 2.0's noise reduction tool

• Discover how to use Sharpener Pro 2.0 for razor-sharp detail in every medium

• Learn how to incorporate Color Efex Pro 3.0's many filters and effects for retouching, color correction, and endless enhancements

• Expertly convert your color images to black and white with the Silver Efex Pro plug-in

Bonus CD-ROM includes

• Trial versions of Dfine 2.0, Viveza, Color Efex Pro 3.0, and Silver Efex Pro, and a watermarking trial of Sharpener Pro 2.0

• Image source files from the book

See the CD appendix for details and complete system requirements.

About the Author

Joshua D. Bradley has been snapping photos since he received his first disposable camera as a child. His concern for endangered species and his fascination with photography led to his career as assistant to famed nature photographer Moose Peterson. Today Josh is an instructor on Peterson's popular Digital Landscape Workshop Series and Wildlife Photographer's Base Camp sojourns, where he captures images alongside his students.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470287632
• ISBN-13: 978-0470287637
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #167,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Algorithms > Digital Image Processing

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, November 6, 2008

By 

Richard J. Cullen "Rich Cullen" (Naperville, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques (Paperback)

This book is truly awful. First of all, it is unreadable. Almost every illustration is a full screen screen-shot reproduced at 4 1/4" x 3 1/4", two on a page, with plenty of white space. The Nik screens use light gray text on a dark gray background, which is fine on the screen, because it doesn't corrupt your color vision, but it is totally unreadable when printed at such a small size in the book.

The text itself is bad. It is so full of typographical and grammatical errors that it is jarring to read. For instance, on page 106, what does "In steps the Reflector effects, and their ability to bring back an image." mean? Is there a verb in there that I missed? Is "reflector" a proper noun?

If the copy were redeeming, the book might be worth the struggle; but it isn't. I was hoping for a reference book that would help me figure out what the various filters do and how to use them. Instead, the book is a random walk through the filters that the author particularly likes, with a description of how he would apply them to specific images. Color Efex Pro contains 52 filters, with variations on many of the filters. The book covers fewer than 20 filters.

These comments apply only to Color Efex Pro, which is the only product that I own and the only part of the book that I slogged through. By the way, Color Efex Pro is a great program, even though it is not well documented. I bought this book to try to fill that void.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not very in-depth, poor sizing of images, October 23, 2008

By 

D. Kosiur - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques (Paperback)

The author too frequently breezes through some of his applications of the Nik filters. In his attempt to cover all the filters and give examples of the use of many of them, he makes his discussion of the applications too brief.

Although he often explains what you're seeing in the accompanying images, the small size of the images makes it difficult to read some of the parameters he's set in the screenshots. There are times when he refers to what are supposed to be obvious parameter differences between screenshots, expecting you to read them from the screenshots, but the size and colors used make it impossible to do so. Both Josh and the publisher should have realized that the light gray-on-gray and white lettering-on-gray UI that Nik insists on using do not improve readability on the scales used in the book.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy and no more info than the online material, October 23, 2008

By 

M. Woods (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques (Paperback)

Very disappointed with this. No real information and so many errors, I imagine it wasn't reviewed. Would have returned it had I not already removed the CD.