Hello,
Nik Silver Efex Pro seems to be a very good software but I wonder what would be the advantages of using it instead of using Lightroom 2. Upoint seems very easy and intuitive but the workflow is more simple if you are only using LR.
Does Silver Efex Pro provide features that cannot be done with LR? (I don't really care with film simulation provided b Siver Efex Pro)
Thanks for all
I've been thrilled with the flexibility of the sliders for each color, and the new local adjustment brush in LR for making very nice B&W images. However, Silver Efex, to me, offers more precise control through the UPoint technology, and the adjustment of the color sliders of LR is included but only a small part of the SE features.
The sample presets on the left hand side of SE show your image with the each preset applied, and you can quickly scroll through to see if any are applicable. Even if you choose one, it is only a starting point, as any parameter of tone, color or saturation adjustment and more can be overridden and set manually.
I have been able to coax tonal separation out of objects in images that in CS3 or Lightroom would have been hopelessly merged without an awful lot of work, but in SE take just a couple of adjustments.
There is probably nothing in SE that I would not be able to accomplish in LR and/or CS3, but the ease of working in SE makes it my choice for B&W conversions.
I saw SE (as well as Dfine, Viveza and Color Efex) demonstrated by NIK at the New England Consortium of Camera Clubs at Amherst, MA this year. As a Photoshop user since version 5, and a Lightroom user since 1.1, I recognized immediately the NIK solutions to many of the problems that I had found time consuming and tedious to work out. The NIK internal masking also seems to leave few or no artifacts by comparison, as well.
I don't work for NIK, and I love CS3 and LR. The Silver Efex just gives me more ease and flexibility than the Adobe software.
