question about silverfx...

glad i'm not the only one in the dark...;)

i keep reading about the differences between film and digital and came to the realization that for many of us...who in the 'old days' were seeking that no grain look to our images...that digital sort of delivered that look to us. i know that i went to medium format and slower film when i wanted less grain and now i can get that look with ease. is it any wonder that some like digital more than film?
 
Yes and no. Many of the presets are meant to replicate different film looks, but there are also presets that can be more liberally interpreted. More of an idea of film then what actual film looks like.

And then the are the custom settings which you can use whoever you'd like. As i see it, It's a simplified and more automated version of what photoshop can do in terms of using your computer as a digital darkroom. There's less finesse involved, but at the same time I feel that it gives you more control. I think it's more about simplifying the process then anything else. How you use it is up to you.

A lot of people tend to get carried away with custom settings. Which makes things feel cheap and creates a stigma about using it and other apps like it.
 
Depending what other editing software you use, you might like some of the controls Silver FX offers to crate the final image (I like their contrast and brightness sliders) whether you are also trying to fake a film look or not.
 
back alley said:
this might be naive but...

is the main purpose of this software to make digital images look like film images?
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No, though it does support that goal. It has very simplified and productive controls to do things like emulate color filters after the fact, selectively adjust/enhance items or areas of the image, etc. It also offers split-toning, vignetting, and border effects (which starts edging back toward film emulation). And...they added selective colorization a version or so ago.
 
The main purpose is to make color images into black and white ones, though you can "print" B&W files, like scanned negatives or Leica MM files in it, too, albeit without the option of color filter effects.
 
Come on guys stop hedging.

The answer is a resounding YES..

The product is named "SilverEfx" after all, not black and white converter with options. It is made to emulate silver based film because many people feel digital black and white looks sterile and crappy. You may not agree with that sentiment but by and large that's why people shell out $200 for this product. I know that's why I did. It's instagram for people with M9s.
 
I use it to convert images to black and white and get them looking how I want them. I don't look for any particular "film" look as such. I even use it to process some of my scanned film images!
 
I use Nik software regularly. The main purpose of Nik software is to provide purposed processing tools to achieve results that would otherwise require a great deal of expertise and experience with Photoshop. It is more cost effective (for me) to use Nik plug ins with LR than to purchase and become expert in producing similar results with Photoshop. I have been using data processing software since 1973 and Photoshop is one of the most torturous user interfaces I have ever experienced. In fact Photshop is the only software I am unable tonlearn on my own out of the hundreds of data manipulation programs I've used.

If one wants to emulate film, then Silverfx will make let you do this task more efficiently than learning from scratch how to achieve the same look with Photoshop. I am not interested in simulating color film. But I happen to find LR suitable for producing B&W images from raw files. But I also think Silverfx is a valuable alternate path..

I happen to use Nik's Viveza 2 because it is much more efficient than the selective adjustment brushes in LR, which is much, much more efficient (for me) than learning how to do the same thing in Photoshop.

Silverfx provides convenience. What you do with it depends on you.
 
I think that's misleading.

It's a plug in for lightroom or photoshop, not a complete tool. You send your images from Photoshop or Lightroom to SilverEfx and then work on there.

It doesn't work on the RAW file, it makes a copy and works on that using destructive (non reversible) adjustments. By that I mean once you are done, you can't revisit your history next time you open it like you can with non destructive editors like Lightroom where the editing steps are basically a sidecar list of actions that get applied to the image.

back alley said:
so, it's a complete image editing tool and not a single purpose software...thanks!
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nightfly said:
I think that's misleading.

It's a plug in for lightroom or photoshop, not a complete tool. You send your images from Photoshop or Lightroom to SilverEfx and then work on there.

It doesn't work on the RAW file, it makes a copy and works on that using destructive (non reversible) adjustments. By that I mean once you are done, you can't revisit your history next time you open it like you can with non destructive editors like Lightroom where the editing steps are basically a sidecar list of actions that get applied to the image.
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sorry...i missed the ? at the end...it was a question.
 
nightfly said:
I think that's misleading.

It's a plug in for lightroom or photoshop, not a complete tool. You send your images from Photoshop or Lightroom to SilverEfx and then work on there.

It doesn't work on the RAW file, it makes a copy and works on that using destructive (non reversible) adjustments. By that I mean once you are done, you can't revisit your history next time you open it like you can with non destructive editors like Lightroom where the editing steps are basically a sidecar list of actions that get applied to the image.
Click to expand...

I'm doing more of the conversion and editing directly in Lightroom now that the tools have improved (especially brushes and grad ND filters). What you say regarding the destructive editing and lack of edit history is very true. It's not a substitute of course, but the SEP2 user can save the final result of their editing as a user preset (excepting local adjustments with "control points"), then apply this as a starting point to another image if they wish.

Sometimes I like to load up an image (copy) in SEP2 and just run through the presets to give me ideas about how the image might look with different treatments. I'll usually then go back to Lightroom and play with it there, but sometimes SEP2 is the easiest and quickest tool for the job. I'll even do this with an image I'm planning to print in the darkroom, to help me visualise the final image I'm aiming for. SEP2 is particularly good for the fake borders for those of us with no photoshop skills, although I now prefer the mogrify export plugin for Lightroom for this.

For me SEP2 has been a very useful step in developing my digital darkroom skills, but I could probably now live without it.
 
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