Silver Efex--any Opinions?

[greyelm]

completely ignorant here...

how does it work?
if i use pse now is this like a treatment after finishing in pse or instead of pse?

Either, SFX is an add on to pse, you can do minor adjustments in pse and then jump to SFX or use SFX after you have done crops etc in pse. After the SFX treatment the image will end up in Pse when you quit.

I use Lightroom 4 and my workflow is to import the raw into LR, make minor adjustments such as exposure and sharpnes, LR exports a tiff copy to SFX, I make the SFX adjustments and then quit back to LR where I now have a B&W copy with the original raw file next to it. Further adjustments can be made in LR before export to jpeg.

 

[paulfish4570]

from my first effort today, x100, provia, converted via SEP:

 

[thirtyfivefifty]

I've tried it, but I didn't see anything that would make me want it. Just work out of Lightroom/Photoshop.

 

[maggieo]

I'm a convert to SEP2- I did the two-week trial and had to buy it.

Oh, a note on the borders- you can adjust the size of them to your liking (sort of like everything in the plug-in).

It does a great job with both Raw files and JPEGs. It really brought out the best in some old P&S shots of mine from a decade ago, for instance.


Mt. Fuji Inn, May 23, 2003 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr


Ghost Waitress, May 23, 2003 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr


Pool Bus, Wilber, NE, August 06, 2005 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr


Pool Bus, Wilber, NE, August 06, 2005 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr

And it loves the files from my X10 and X100:


Michael's Eye, April 08, 2012 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr (X10)


Michael Makes a Point, April 07, 2012 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr (X100)

M8, too:


Pied De Couchon, September 26, 2007 by Maggie Osterberg, on Flickr

I like how close it gets me to my favorite Agfa paper tones. Oh, and I use it as a plug-in in Aperture.

 

[peterm1]

From what I have seen it is easily best in class software.

Will you like it if you move from film to digital? I cant answer that.

Many people find making the transition difficult till they really get into using digital and learn the tricks. But I will say this while you can do the basics (ie converting to mono) in photoshop without Silver Efex you will find (a) that its harder to learn the photoshop techniques if you are not already familiar with photoshop and (b) Silver Efex seems to have some really nice options - ability to emulate different black and white filters (red, green amber etc), ability to tone the resulting image, ability to add vgnettes, ability to emulate different film types etc.

If money is an issue you could buy Corel Paintshop Pro X4 and use its inbuilt functions (its a fully functional competitor to photoshop with most of its processing functions plus a very effective black and white conversion filter. It uses a color wheel - you move a pointer to a position on the color wheel (for the filter color) and it then produces the mono image accordingly. Very cutomisable and easier than mucking around with channels and other basic conversion tools if you are not familiar with them.

 

[mathomas]

I love it and use it both for B&W conversions of digital camera files, and for processing my B&W negative scans (I try to keep the scans very flat, and use Silver Efex to do all adjustments after the scan).

I like it so much, I did a series of videos on my scanning/Silver Efex process (not that I'm an expert, but you can at least see how an amateur uses it):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBE326B6A378F7605


(I use all Nik's products, but Silver Efex and Output Sharpener the most)

 

[shiro_kuro]

Silver Efex is an exceptional piece of software . As others have mentioned the excellent use of control points ,if used in Photo shop the software has more features such as selectively painting in the effect within the image ,stacking the effects on top of each other ,controlling the opacity of the layer etc. To get the most out of this software try it out in PS . Also if you take one of their free webinars they offer a discount code at the end . Lightroom can also be used to get stunning results on it's own and more often than not I just work within Lightroom 4 ...... depends on the image and how much time I want to put into it ..... if it is going to be printed then it for sure goes through the Nik software workflow ...
Thanks Mathamos for sharing the series on scanning will check it out ....

 

[kossi008]

completely ignorant here...

how does it work?
if i use pse now is this like a treatment after finishing in pse or instead of pse?

I've used the trial version with PSE. Silver Efex is installed as a filter; you can use it at whatever point in your workflow you see fit. I usually do a bit of pre- and postprocessing around it...

I like it quite a lot, but I'm not sure I need version 2. The 50€ for Version 1 is a no-brainer for me...

 

[ChrisN]

I had to upgrade my PC to make it usable. With the old PC it took several seconds to write the result of an adjustment to the screen, which made it painful to use. The new PC with 32GB ram, i7 CPU and 64-bit Windows 7 makes it a pleasure to use.

It is not non-destructive editing, and there is no record kept of the adjustments made to the final image, so unless you save the process as a custom preset you can't be certain of repeating the exact effect. And custom presets won't save the local adjustments made with control points. I find it a bit of a nuisance that control points have to be circular, when the area I want to dodge or burn is anything but round. OK I know I can work around this by linking several control points, but the dodge and burn tools in LR3 are much easier for me. I find I use it in combination with LR, using both packages for different parts of the job.

 

[David_Manning]

It's the best b&w software package out there. Yes, you can use a preset, or you can use a preset as a starting point.

My favorite part is that I can dodge and burn with very fine control...better than I ever could with an enlarger. So my b&w images are coming out closer to how I "saw" them.

 

[celluloidprop]

My only knock on SEP is that some of the film profiles are waaaaay too contrasty and you lose highlights and shadows right off the bat.

Doesn't really bother me, though, if I stick to the APX100 and Neopan 100 profiles.

 

[andephotographic]

Is the SEP plugin in for LR3 like a lite version of the full thing?

Edit: Nevermind, I have the thing for a couple years now and only just realised how to burn and dodge in the program! Doh!

 

[maggieo]

My only knock on SEP is that some of the film profiles are waaaaay too contrasty and you lose highlights and shadows right off the bat.

That's true, but with control points, it's dead easy to tweak the image to make it just right, or just move the global contrast slider down a bit.

It reminds me of my Alesis synthesizer. The presets, as they are from the factory, are kind of rubbish, but with a wee bit of a tweak, they can sound fantastic.

 

[ChrisN]

One interesting thing about SEP is that it will run as a stand-alone program (at least if you download the "for Lightroom" version). It lacks a dialog box for opening files, but you can simply make a desktop shortcut to the SEP executable, then drag-and drop your image file onto the shortcut to open the program.

 

[Phantomas]

Just to throw my two cents in there - I use Alienskin Exposure, which has a lot of B&W and color film presets, all further customisable. From top of my head you have a lot more film choices in Alienskin than in SFX. I've only recently installed SFX but haven't gotten used to it yet, mostly because I keep going back to Alienskin plug-in.