Silver Efex Pro 2 Vs Dxo Filmpack Software These Days
With this, you can not only launch each plug-in directly, but you can choose a processing preset too.Nik Collection 4 adds a Meta Preset feature which can combine results from two or more Nik plug-ins. If you open images in Photoshop you can launch them from here too – though DxO installs its own Nik Collection Selective Tool Panel which offers a lot more control. If you use Lightroom Classic as your digital hub, all eight can be used as plug-ins. These do now seem somewhat past their sell-by date, as you would probably carry out these jobs in raw processing software these days.You can fit these plug-ins into your workflow in a variety of ways. Lightroom question Silver Efex Pro 2 Lightroom vs Photoshop.Bringing up the rear are Dfine and Sharpener Pro, which offer noise reduction and creative/output sharpening respectively.
But as of Nik Collection 3, you can also opt to create 'multi-page TIFFs' for editing in the Nik plug-ins. But DxO has found some clever workarounds to make these 'destructive' filters 'non-destructive', though only with specific workflows.If you're working from within Photoshop you can create Smart Objects, which allow re-editable filter effects – so it's Photoshop doing the heavy lifting here. Once you've applied the effect, you can't backtrack through the settings. (Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)Effects filters are typically pixel-based and 'destructive'. Non-destructive editingNik Collection 3 introduced a new 'multipage TIFF' format which allowed non-destructive editing with the Nik Collection plug-ins. You can use them as external editors within any program that offers an external editor feature and you can even launch them directly as standalone programs.
(Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)Silver Efex Pro has a huge reputation amongst black and white fans. Analog Efex Pro 2Silver Efex Pro 3 is the latest version of one of the best respected black and white tools on the market. They are twice the size of regular TIFFs, but they offer non-destructive editing from any program – it's the adapted TIFF format that makes this possible.The pace of change within the plug-ins themselves may not be rapid (they are pretty good as they are), but DxO is constantly finding new ways to tweak the features and integrate them into a variety of different workflows.So that's enough background – let's take a look at these plug-ins individually to see what they do and assess how well they do it.
Viveza 3Viveza 3 has been elevated from a simple adjustment tool to a more effective color adjustment plug-in with enhanced U-point controls and preset 'looks'. DxO has added luminosity and color range sliders to its U-point adjustments so that you can make them less or more selective.Control point adjustments in many of DxO's plug-ins, but in Nik Collection 4 it's only Silver Efex Pro 3 and Viveza 3 that get the new controls. It says it's done this to make the interface clearer and to give a better view of the image, though anyone who's been using the old Silver Efex Pro for years (like us) may find this more of an aggravation than an advantage.But it's hard to argue with the second enhancement. One whole new feature is DxO's ClearView tool, brought over from DxO PhotoLab, and not unlike Dehaze in Lightroom – and it's especially effective on black and white images, where contrast and drama are arguably more important than sober realism.DxO has been especially bold with its U-point selective adjustment technology here, by moving the tiny adjustment sliders attached to each control point to the toolbar on the right hand side. The tools are largely the same, but the interface has been brought bang up to date. Both the presets and the tools capture the black and white creative process brilliantly.Silver Efex Pro 3, updated for Nik Collection 4, takes a bold step forward.
You may need to change the position of control points or modify their settings, but there will be much less to do than if you were starting from scratch. It now has presets too, so you can save your favorite 'looks' for re-used.One more feature for Viveza 3 and Silver Efex Pro 3 is the new ability to save control points and their adjustments as part of a preset effect. For a long time it's been little more than a showcase for Nik/DxO's control point technology, offering no creative presets or effects of its own, simply tools for applying global or local color adjustments.We're told by DxO, though, that Viveza is one of the most popular plug-ins amongst users, hence its selection for upgrading in Nik Collection 4.Viveza 3 now has the same control point masking adjustments as Silver Efex Pro 3, and with the adjustment tools moved to the sidebar.
Nik Collection 3 was already very good, but what DxO has done here is to begin a modernization process which – we hope – will ripple through to all the plug-ins in due course. Have you ever felt jaded and bored by the effects in your current photo editing software? You won’t here – once you start dabbling in the four main Nik Collection plug-ins, the minutes and then the hours just fly by.Here are some of the sample images we created for this review.(Image credit: Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)Nik Collection 4 is a very interesting update. These plug-ins may have been around for a long time, but their preset effects, their tools and controls, and the sense of excitement and discovery they create, are as fresh as ever. Quality of resultsOur opinion of the Nik Collection's results hasn't changed. And while Sharpener Pro can be useful for optimising images for specific print sizes and printing devices, its ‘capture sharpening’ options are no more effective than the sharpening tools in any image editor – including DxO PhotoLab. Dfine is a noise reduction tool that works well enough, but most photographers will concentrate on applying noise reduction at the raw processing stage, not on already-processed images.
Come to that, we can't think of any other software that does – though ON1 Photo RAW 2021 and Exposure X6 come close. The Nik Collection doesn't have Luminar's clever AI Portrait enhancement, Sky Replacement or Augmented Sky technology, but Luminar does even approach the creative and inspirational breadth of the Nik Collection. You might say they were always a pretty disparate bunch, with a distinctly different look and feel for each, but with the Silver Efex Pro and Viveza updates, good as they are, that's even more the case.This doesn't detract from the fact that here is a collection of excellent creative photographic plug-ins that individually offer enough power, control and inspiration for a whole application, but are offered together as what we think is still the ultimate creative suite for photographers.We're going to draw a comparison here between this classic suite and Luminar AI, two products from opposite ends of the spectrum, but both designed to offer instant inspiration.
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