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Nik Silver vs OnOne Perfect B&W
divamum
Registered Users Posts: 9,021 Major grins
Further to my question buried in the Nik thread...
Which of these two programs do people prefer, and why? I've trialled Nik and thought it was ok - the interface is not intuitive for me, but I really liked the BW conversions it does, as well as the sloppy borders it includes.
Am now downloading OnOne to give it a try - it seems quite similar in scope (and also includes borders). I'm not that crazy about the OnOne free LR presets I've got, but I won't judge it by that (those are freebies, after all, and presumably not their best output).
OnOne is $100; Nik $150. I know it seems like a no-brainer to get Nik since it's a complete set, but I really didn't "click" with it while I was running the trial - the interface baffles me so far, and the other included tools didn't seem to offer much over my current workflow in LR and PS.
Thoughts?
Which of these two programs do people prefer, and why? I've trialled Nik and thought it was ok - the interface is not intuitive for me, but I really liked the BW conversions it does, as well as the sloppy borders it includes.
Am now downloading OnOne to give it a try - it seems quite similar in scope (and also includes borders). I'm not that crazy about the OnOne free LR presets I've got, but I won't judge it by that (those are freebies, after all, and presumably not their best output).
OnOne is $100; Nik $150. I know it seems like a no-brainer to get Nik since it's a complete set, but I really didn't "click" with it while I was running the trial - the interface baffles me so far, and the other included tools didn't seem to offer much over my current workflow in LR and PS.
Thoughts?
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I have both but I must be honest and admit that I have always been biased toward Nik probably because I have always found the OnOne product less intuitive and more clumsy. I have been using Silver Efex since the ground up; literally, I was a beta tester before Silver Efex 1 was released. The presets are a good starting point and they can always be finessed. Or you can pick a film type and work it any way you want. But OnOne also has presets. I prefer the controls point in Nik products to using a brush within OnOne; the brush is not that fluid. The control points do an excellent job when the area affected is radial but have more trouble if you need to do a iinear local control; then you are better off to go into photoshop for more adjustments like dodging and burning. The one thing I really like about Silver Efex that I think is lacking in OnOne is that it has a history state so if you like what you did 10 steps ago you can get back to it. Another one you might want to look at is Topaz black and white effects. Not very expensive and if you are a napp member, i think they offer a 25% discount.
Hope that helps
My Fine Art Photography
My Infrared Photography
www.CynthiaMerzerPhotography.com
http://www.niksoftware.com/learnmore/usa/index.php/webinars/archives/
The videos are awesome. Once you get the hang of how Nik works, anything else seems inferior, clumsy. Look for videos by Janice Wendt and not necessarily Silver Efex. Her general how to use the filter videos for color Efex and Vivieza can be very good for getting the hang on how to use the control points. Remember with the control points, use a (-) negative control point to keep something from affecting a certain are and a (+) control point to force an affect on a particular area.
My Fine Art Photography
My Infrared Photography
www.CynthiaMerzerPhotography.com
I've been using the trials in LR - I'm sure they're fine in PS too -and I do use PS as well - but I usually start in LR, so a LR plugin is very useful to me.
I played around with OnOne - it's ok, but I wasn't all that impressed. It's ok, but the algorithms just didn't do as good a job. I do like the layering it does, though - that's good for desat looks and control over glow etc (seemed more than you usually have in LR). I think what prompted all this is a conversion I did while using the Nik trial - I loved what I got and haven't been able to replicate it with PS or LR!
Has anybody found any really BASIC Nik tutorials? I usually figure things out pretty fast, and this interface has me clicking randomly without any idea what I'm doing. Any basic info would be helpful so I can make a final decision on whether to buy it or not (trial has now expired)................
http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/usa/videos.html
Just click on the links on the right side of the page for the different videos. Hope this helps you out.
GaryB
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!” - Ansel Adams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwUUO8voTxg&list=PLp5lYDsQi4gn2FUrR_ztLc7jPs8yPejUI
Take a look at the ones on this page:
http://education.niksoftware.com/training/index.php/webinars/archives/#/plug-in-with-nik-live-with-john-batdorff-/0/11/0/old-to-new/0/page:2
All I did was go to the nik site, click on the dropdown for Learn>On Demand Videos, filter for just Silver Efex2 and then have it show you oldest to newest. Start with the oldest vidoe because those are the ones nik produced when siiver efex2 first came out.
Another suggestion is to learn to use these filters as smart filters. From lightroom, you can export as a smart object and then run any nik filter as a smart filter. You can run multiple nik filters in one smart filter layer which saves tons of space in a file, otherwise with an image from an 18-20 megapixel camera your background layer alone is 50 mb then each layer for each instance of a filter is another 50 mg; the files get huge if you run a lot of filters. And of course, the beauty of a smart filter is that you can go back into the filter later and re-adjust. The only caveat is that if you run multiple filters in one smart filter layer, if you mask, you mask the effect from all of the filters which is why you need to learn to use the control points; it minimizes masking.
HTH
My Fine Art Photography
My Infrared Photography
www.CynthiaMerzerPhotography.com