Using Nik Silver Efex with Lightroom 2

gmitchel850

Nik Multimedia has been adding Lightroom 2 support to their Photoshop plug-ins. Nik Silver Efex Pro is the most recent. It's a popular tool for B&W conversion, toning photos, simulating film grain effects, applying vignettes, etc.

I made a short video (6 minutes) that demonstrates how to use Nik Silver Efex Pro as an external editor with LR2 and also briefly explores some of the features in Nik Efex Pro that make it such a popular tool for converting color photos into B&W.

http://www.thelightsright.com/NikSilverEfexProWithLR

Cheers,

Mitch

arodney

Too bad this so called plug-in, like every plug-in for both LR and Aperture don't do anything different than what you'd get in Photoshop, its not conducted in the Raw processing pipeline but rather on a TIFF rendered out of the app. Unlike Bibble, which does use Noise Ninja and others directly in the pipeline, you're getting true parametric editing advantages and true non destructive editing. Aperture and Lightroom plug-ins only save you the hassle of doing the work in Photoshop but the net results are the same: Process the Raw into a rendered image, apply the plug-in.

gmitchel850

arodney wrote:

Too bad this so called plug-in, like every plug-in for both LR and Aperture don't do anything different than what you'd get in Photoshop, its not conducted in the Raw processing pipeline but rather on a TIFF rendered out of the app. Unlike Bibble, which does use Noise Ninja and others directly in the pipeline, you're getting true parametric editing advantages and true non destructive editing. Aperture and Lightroom plug-ins only save you the hassle of doing the work in Photoshop but the net results are the same: Process the Raw into a rendered image, apply the plug-in.

I agree, Andrew. When I finish my comprehensive review of Silver Efex Pro, you'll see that the discussion of using it from Lightroom makes exactly your point:

(1) You have to make a TIFF copy to work with it in an external editor.
(2) When you come back to Lightroom, you are editing a TIFF and no longer a RAW file.

I thought about mentioning it in the video and decided it was a distraction. I wanted to stay focused on the how rather than digressing on the caveats.

While you, I, and my others use LR and Photoshop, there are folks who only own LR. This expands their options.

Plus, B&W conversion should sit further back in the workflow. I think we'll both agree it should ccome after noise reduction, capture sharpening, and basic adjustments to color and tone. With Photoshop, those will be done for many users in ACR. Once the photo gets into Photoshop, you're already past the RAW data anyways.

All this being said here is why I decided not to go down that path in the video.

Cheers,

Mitch

pathfinder

arodney wrote:

Too bad this so called plug-in, like every plug-in for both LR and Aperture don't do anything different than what you'd get in Photoshop, its not conducted in the Raw processing pipeline but rather on a TIFF rendered out of the app. Unlike Bibble, which does use Noise Ninja and others directly in the pipeline, you're getting true parametric editing advantages and true non destructive editing. Aperture and Lightroom plug-ins only save you the hassle of doing the work in Photoshop but the net results are the same: Process the Raw into a rendered image, apply the plug-in.

I agree, Andrew.

I recently installed the plug ins for Color Efex and Viveza for Lightroom, since I had them for Photoshop for some time. But I quickly found that I strongly prefer to use Viveza or Color Efex on a layer in Photoshop ( not in Lightroom ) so that I can use a mask and opacity adjustments to fine tune my edits.

gmitchel850

pathfinder wrote:

I recently installed the plug ins for Color Efex and Viveza for Lightroom, since I had them for Photoshop for some time. But I quickly found that I strongly prefer to use Viveza or Color Efex on a layer in Photoshop ( not in Lightroom ) so that I can use a mask and opacity adjustments to fine tune my edits.

You can achieve this -- admittedly in a clunky and more resource-intensiuve way -- with LR and Photoshop. You could stack the RAW file and the TIFF fropm Viveza or Color Efex in a PS Smart Object.

If you have Photoshop (even PSE) as well as LR, I do not know why you would want to use an of Nik tools from LR. Just do your RAW edits in LR, then do the rest of the editing in PS. Go ahead and run the Nik plug-ins from there. As you say, you have added flexibility that way.

I believe Andrew's broader point is that it would be better if the Nik tools (and similar Photoshop plug-ins) could work with RAW files rather than rendered TIFFs. A plug-in interface for LR (or ACR) that offered similar abilities as Photoshop filter plug-ins would be advantageous.

Cheers,

Mitch