B&W - Silver Efex vs Lightroom

Cameron

I recently downloaded a trial of Nik Silver Efex and I have to say the results with minimal effort seem to be fabulous. However, I wonder if I could, with some practice, get similar results with some nice lightroom presets and use of the channel mixer? My initial results are better than my LR workflow has produced, but the price of Silver Efex is pretty steep...

Any long-time Silver Efex users or LR B&W experts care to comment?

arodney

CSwinton wrote:

I recently downloaded a trial of Nik Silver Efex and I have to say the results with minimal effort seem to be fabulous. However, I wonder if I could, with some practice, get similar results with some nice lightroom presets and use of the channel mixer? My initial results are better than my LR workflow has produced, but the price of Silver Efex is pretty steep...

Any long-time Silver Efex users or LR B&W experts care to comment?

If you could, that be much better because you’d be applying this non destructively within the Raw processing pipeline rather than after the Raw is rendered.

Qarik

CSwinton wrote:

I recently downloaded a trial of Nik Silver Efex and I have to say the results with minimal effort seem to be fabulous. However, I wonder if I could, with some practice, get similar results with some nice lightroom presets and use of the channel mixer? My initial results are better than my LR workflow has produced, but the price of Silver Efex is pretty steep...

Any long-time Silver Efex users or LR B&W experts care to comment?

I just downloaded and played with it for a bit. Here is what I see that nik does that LR can not or is difficult to do:

1) control points..this is pretty cool. You can select tonality as an object in a radius and play with them. technically you can achieve this with LR but it's all manual brush strokes!

2) color filters for the BW conversion. It's not obvious how to do this in LR.

3) adding grain..this I really like..very powerful. Something like this will be available in the next LR release.

I think for for everything else there is an equivalent in LR.

protect highlights = recovery
structure =clarity
protect shadows = fill light / blacks

Nike does have a bit more control over vignetting as well.

eur0ed

arodney wrote:

If you could, that be much better because you’d be applying this non destructively within the Raw processing pipeline rather than after the Raw is rendered.

Silver efex doesn't have to be destructive though. When run on a smart object in cs4 Silver efex works as a smart filter and is editable/changeable at any time and can be hidden like a layer style. When importing as a smart object raw files are never rendered. You're working on/above the raw itself, so you can at any time double click and fall right back into ACR or silver efex right in the middle of your workflow.

I purchased silver efex and color efex, added them to my workflow and use them on every image I post..not because they do things I can't do in PS. Any effect you can do with these plugins can be done manually, it's just a time thing. If I can get the perfect effect in 2 minutes through silver efex and be totally nondestructive, it's worth it to me. That's another 10-30 minutes I can spend at the bar, watching tv, or on my D&B if I feel extra focused.

As for the OP's question, Lightroom was never meant to be a full blown retouching solution. It is amazing for batch processing and simple posts, but receiving the kind of results possible with silver efex would be pushing the limits of the grand majority of LR users. There are however free presets available that will give you close to the same results, with less control over the exact outcome. As I said above, I purchased the Nik plugins for PS not because they offer unique results..but because I can edit my photo once nondestructivly in a fraction of the time I'd take normally, turn it on/off or manipulate it as the client desires without having to rework any of my other steps (usually).

My workflow for BW images goes roughly like this:

Adobe bridge for image selection
Double Click to open
Raw work in ACR
Shift click on open image to open as a smart object in cs4
Silver efex
Crop
I do my shaping (only thing in my normal workflow that is destructive)
D&B or whatever retouch method that's going to be used
Sharpen etc

Kyle D

For a great e-book on how to use Silver Efex Pro, you should check out Jason Odell's book, The Photographer's Guide to Nik Silver Efex Pro. I have bought both of his other e-books, one on Capture NX and the other on Capture NX2 and they have helped tremendously. I also plan on buying this book too as soon as I get Silver Efex Pro.