Silver Efex Pro [Old Version]

by Nik Software

Product Features

• One-click toning selector gives you sepia, selenium, gold, silver, split-toning and user-defined colors for maximum flexibility
• Ability to select from over a dozen preset styles, as well as save your own
• Revolutionary U Point technology to control contrast and tonality without the need for complicated selections or layer masks
• Powerful and complete black and white toolset
• State-of-the-art grain engine

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001DEV95W
• Item model number: nik-5100
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 29, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,590 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Silver Efex Pro provides complete power and control to create professional quality black and white images from your color digital photographs, featuring award- winning U Point technology for precisely controlling detail and tonality without the need for complicated selections or layer masks. Advanced imaging algorithms protect against unwanted artifacts, a comprehensive collection of emulated black and white film types, and a state-of-the-art grain reproduction engine help produce the highest quality black and white images possible while providing more freedom to experiment.

Product Description

Discover the beauty of black and white photography with Silver Efex Pro, the world's leading solution for creating stunning images. Silver Efex Pro offers a powerful set of darkroom-inspired features, including the revolutionary U Point technology that enables you to fine-tune your images with precise selective enhancements.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome black and white plug-in for PS and Aperture, August 11, 2008

By 

J. Austin - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silver Efex Pro [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Even though this product is quite pricey, if you love black and white, it is definitely worth it. Gives you amazing control over converting color images to b&w, using predefined templates, additional templates from their website, and also custom setting you can make, and save. Absolutely fantastic. I am running it on an intel Mac Pro w/ 8 Gig of Ram. It is very fast when launched from w/in photoshop. I only gave it 4 stars out of 5 because it is incredibly slow working w/ large 12 and 14 bit raw files when launched from Apple Aperture (but fine from w/in photoshop). A number of people on the web have complained about this and Nik has yet to acknowledge this as a problem. I even offered to help them trouble shoot it to find out where the memory/performance issue was coming from and they didn't respond to my offer. One solution seems to be to launch the plug-in in 8 bit photoshop mode instead of 16 bit but that is just a work around, not a real solution as other Nik software works fine w/ photoshop in 16 bit mode. Overall a great product, I highly recommend you download the 14 day demo and give it a try, and then buy it if you like it as much as I did. The Aperture slow performance was almost a deal-breaker for me but I purchased it anyway knowing that Nik would eventually have to fix that one problem area.

UPDATE: 5 stars. Nik has released version 1.001 which addresses the Aperture slowness problem. Nice and fast now. Highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars B&W effects for digital users that reproduce old-timey film!, December 20, 2009

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silver Efex Pro [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Silver Efex Pro---Worth the money, December 19, 2009

By 

Indyhart - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Silver Efex Pro [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

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.