You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Easy Black And White Portrait Conversion (Using the Now FREE Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 Plugin - Photography)
This is pretty amazing. I only did basic photo editing for newspaper pics.
Did you say the editing software is FREE?
Yes the plugins are now free but you need either Photoshop or Lightroom to use them. You can get them both (LR+PS) for £8.57 per month on the Creative Cloud Photographers subscription which is pretty cheap. The Nik plugins would have been an extra £500 on top if you got the whole package or £150 each as single plugins but they made them completely free in March:)
I have an older version of Photoshop and Illustrator. I'll have to check out the plugins because my family just shipped a bunch of old photos that I need to scan. I was hoping to surprise them with touched up digital copies - especially the old black and white ones of my great grandparents...and some photos from the 70s that has that strange orangey tint to them. Thank you for the information!
No problem. I think for retouching of dust and scratches you might be better off just using Photoshop on it's own as I described in my tutorial for my own scanned images to get the best results. Some of the Nik plugins might save you time after you've done this though.
Viveza is their plugin that allows for quick selective enhancement of things like colour and contrast. If you don't have Lightroom it is a good alternative that lets you make adjustments quickly without having to dive into the full Photoshop controls which can take a lot longer to use.
The control points system makes it easy to do localised adjustments without needing to be an expert Photoshopper or indeed needing a Wacom Tablet (which is a necessity for doing the same things in Photoshop the conventional way using layers).
They also have very effective plugins for reducing noise, sharpening etc. I would strongly recommend their Youtube channel to quickly get you up to speed on how to use the different tools - the video tutorials don't take long to watch and once you have seen how to use the tools it will save you a lot of time.