Customer Reviews

Silver Efex Pro [Old Version]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This software can produce stunning monochrome photographs with a little practice. you need a good photo to start, preferably with some large structural object as the central focus.
It is best to do editing for lighting before using nik. I use levels in photoshop elements 7.0.
there is a wide variety of styles, filters, and film emulating modes to choose from. The u-point technology allows for quick editing of selected areas of the photo. the price is high compared to photoshop elements. If you are selling prints like I am you can quickly pay for this software.
To see examples of my edits, including some originals take a look at pbase.com/xtranch/nik_monochrome_edits.

I purchased this after playing around with the trial version. It is quite amazing how easy this is to use and the results that you can get. I compared some of the results to my old 35mm black and white pictures; you can produce results that are very hard to distinguish from the original. The other nice feature is that you can easily add special effects (antique, sepia, etc) and get some really special pictures. The price may be a bit high for some, but not for those who would normally take the time to spruce up their photos a bit. Highly Recommended!

Over the past year I read the reviews of this Nik software product and kept thinking that it would be kind of fun to work with. Finally I broke down and bought it. It was very simple to load and VERY simple to use. Most of it is intuitive if you are already used to manipulating images with Photoshop or some other editing software. I really enjoy seeing what my image looks like with the numerous preset option available, and if you want to see what your image would have looked like if it had been shot with black and white film, there is a pull-down menu with about 10 different types of black and white film. If you select a preset filter for the image you still have the ability to adjust brightness, contrast, shadows, etc. I have been having a lot of fun pulling up old images and experimenting with them using this software plug-in. It sure beats simply desaturating the color from images to come up with black and white. I have already recommended this product to friends. The only problem I have encountered is that the local lab I use to print my images doesn't do a great job with black and white. I am going to have to experiment with online printers to see if I can get black and whites that are more similar to what I see on my computer screen.

Silver Efex Pro is a powerful plug-in for Photoshop. It is fairly simple to get high quality B&W conversions, but if you want it, there is a lot of flexibility to fine-tune the conversions along many different dimensions. If you are familiar with other Nik software (I had used CaptureNX that was developed for Nikon), the learning curve on this software is pretty easy. I'm very satisfied so far.

I agree with all the other positive comments and use this program on a regular basis. It works beautifully with Lightroom 3...something that did not happen with Lightroom 2. My only disappointment is minimal: the only way you can scroll through the possible filters is by using the scroll elevator, as opposed to most programs that would let you scroll right on the images of the presets.

There are several ways to make black & white images with a digital camera. You can set the camera in black & white mode. This records the image in black and white. Later, if you want color, you're out of luck, as the image has been recorded in black & white only.

You may use a digital image editing package and "remove" the color. The resulting image may or may not look good because the relationship of tones may not be correct.

Silver Efex Pro provides a way to take digital color images and render them as black & white images with precise control over several aspects of the process.

-Simulate colored filter effects
-Control sharpness and detail levels
-Evaluate and control the range of tones
-Choose from a number of preset options that offer starting points (or great final products)

The software acts as a plug-into Lightroom, PhotoShop or Apple image editing software.

Installation is easy, and most people with some image editing experience should be able to produce competent black & white images right away.

After being unsatisfied with converting color images to black & white, I purchased this package. It's everything I expected and more - easy to install and use, a great number of options, features I didn't know existed but now I can't live without.

This is great software - well worth the price of admission if you're interesting in making really good black & white imagery!

Turning images into appealing bw photos can be difficult. Certainly, changing mode to 'grayscale' does not do the trick. Playing with channels and channel mixers is a good alternative in photoshop, but it takes time.
This software creates 10 to 20 different black and white options, changing exposure, contrast, grain, etc. It offers several different effects for toning, zone controls (a la ansel adams) and what I love the most, control points. You can control parts of the image for brightness, contrast and structure. It does it beautifully. It integrates with photoshop quite seamlessly. I like it a lot.