#SILVER EFEX PRO 2 DISPLAY DARK FULL#

You can add your own presets, and to help control the number of presets you need to browse through, there is an option to view only Favorites that you select. There is a good variety here, and if you find one that's close to what you want, you can tweak the settings to get just the look you're going for. On the right side of the window you'll find a number of preset looks (Figure 6). Currently you must do each edge separately - I'd like to have the ability to burn all edges at once. This is one area that I'd like to see improved in the next release. Finally, Burn Edges allows you to selectively darken each edge with control over the amount, size, and transition. Vignetting works in the normal way but adds the ability to set rectangular or circular as the shape, and to select the central point. There are a number of presets for toned images (Figure 5), and adjustments can be made for both silver tone and paper color to let you recreate the look of a particular traditional paper.

#SILVER EFEX PRO 2 DISPLAY DARK FULL#

Silver Efex Pro also gives full control over toning, vignetting and edge burning through the Stylizing palette. A good example of this is shown in Figure 4. The Grain Engine bases its grain patterns on the exposure level for each pixel in the image, building the image from grain like traditional film does, rather than overlaying a noise pattern on top of the image. If you've played with some of the other plug-ins available, the grain has an artificial look that is a essentially a noise pattern. Silver Efex has implemented a Grain Engine to emulate this natural style grain. One of the features of many black and white films, and the reason they had such strong followings was the grain properties of the film. There is a tremendous amount of power in this one section of the plug-in, letting you fine-tune any adjustment until it's exactly what you want. Under Film Types, you'll find a number of presets (Figure 3) along with a full set of controls to adjust the effect, including the grain and color sensitivity along with a tone curve. Silver Efex includes Nik's Control Point feature to make masked adjustments, so if you want to enhance the sky and clouds in your image (as an example), you can create a Control Point on the sky to darken the sky while increasing the structure of the clouds (Figure 2).

By default, these controls work globally on the entire image. It works to enhance fine details in the image with positive adjustments, and diffuses with a negative setting. You also have a full set of color filters that can be applied at various hue and strength levels. If you use any of Nik's other plug-ins, you'll feel right at home.ДЄlong the left side of the window are all the controls вЂ“ Brightness, Contrast, Structure, as well as a Shadows/Highlights control to protect important areas of the image from clipping. The first thing you'll note about the plug-in is the familiar interface (Figure 1). So, I was excited to find out about Silver Efex Pro and give it a try.

I've been a fan of Color Efex Pro for several years, and I've reviewed Viveza here with favorable results. Silver Efex Pro is a new product from Nik Software, the same company that produces Viveza and Color Efex Pro among others. Learning to use the Channel Mixer in Photoshop wasn't always easy or intuitive, but some of the plug-ins left very little control over the final product вЂ“ pick your film type and that's it. So, with digital photography, I've often done black and white conversions with a varying degree of success. I grew up with Ansel Adams' powerful images as the pinnacle of photography. In fact, it was black and white photography that first interested me. There is something magical about a well-crafted image in monochrome that is more expressive than any color image could ever be. In a world of over-saturated color, I'm always surprised at the popularity of black and white images.

Silver efex pro 2 display dark