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Well I did these edits manually by choice. Silver Efex comes with a large number of templates that can be used as starting points. And, Silver Efex isn’t a RAW editor. In the same way that Photoshop uses Camera Raw or Lightroom for RAW editing, Silver Efex uses PhotoLab or Lightroom. If there is a comparison to be made it would be u-point vs layers or ACR vs PhotoLab.

@@chriswrightphotographs absolutely, you are right. I am just coming from a point where I am having a dilemma. I keep reading everywhere how great silver efex is... but I fail to see what benefit it has over doing edits, similar to what you do in this video, without having to leave Cpature One... I see more the drawback, that is that silver efex only works on TIF or JPEG so I can not just simply go back and do fine adjustments, the usual things one can do with a RAW file... Whereas in Capture One or Lightroom after every step of adjusting things similarly to what silver efex does I can go back and tweak exposure, shadows, higlights color profile, clarity etc etc all things that have a lot more latitude in a RAW file compared to the exported TIF file

@@sigmundklausok, Capture One is an excellent RAW processor, so I appreciate the nature of the dilemma! I would say that if you have clarity on where you want the image to go, and it sounds as though you do, then Silver Efex offers speed. And tif is a lossless format so no danger of losing detail through roundtripping. For anyone not really familiar with Black and white, Silver Efex offers a lot more than short cuts (speed) in terms of the range of presets. Many of them require very little further processing to get professional level results.

Thanks, it is a beautiful country. I have several attempts at that shot. The light has to be just right, the scene changes radically once the sun is higher!

The premium version has enhanced “around me” functionality which is useful. It’s relatively new so there are gaps, I’m on the coast near Gibraltar this week and there are amazing places to photograph, none of which appear on the app yet. I guess that’s part of the fun, finding the gaps, seeing where people have got to and breaking new ground.

Good questions! XD2/XD - I believe XD2 cannot be applied to some types of RAW file. I’ll try and find the reference for that but my understanding is that XD is the fallback option. There is some corrective sharpening applied in the demosaicing process. I haven’t tested this across all the options but I have no reason to believe the newer versions of noise reduction would behave differently. I too use optical corrections only. HighISO sets a threshold below which no sharpening is applied. This is simply to avoid sharpening noise. I don’t know what metric is used to define the threshold. I’ve never used Topaz. I hear such mixed reports about it that I’ve never been tempted to add it. I also resolved to simplify my workflow. Between PureRAW, PhotoLab, Lightroom and Nik I feel I have enough noise reduction!

Absolutely, good point. I always use white background when soft proofing for print. Agree also about the colour rendering, anything that changes the saturation or luminosity levels needs to be done early in the process, I generally go with optical corrections, then cropping, then colour rendering. Leaving these till later in the process almost always incurs rework on the basic settings and colour adjustments.

Thank you!

You’re very kind, it’s a pleasure!

That’s exasperating! I don’t think Nik 6 is available any longer and unless it’s sourced from DxO there would be no support for it. I found it worthwhile to get Viewpoint 4, it’s very good standalone or as a plugin. The current offer is objectively pretty good, next likely window would be Black Friday when most software gets discounted but whether it will match 20% I have no idea.

Does viewpoint add much more than the perspective and other tools in photolab 7 elite. I trialled it a while back and decided I didn't need it. I do have nik 6 and 7 as well. I find I never need to use nik 6 for perspective work. I do sometimes adjust perspective in Affinity which I find more intuitive

@@stefanmarchit’s definitely horses for courses. Viewpoint does deliver more refined functionality for architectural photography, and I have needed that on a few occasions. But certainly not for every photograph.

Glad you like them! Thanks!

Thank you, glad it is useful. That's interesting about Topaz and Sharpen Output, I was impressed with the New Nik Collection update, Sharpen Output is certainly very effective.

Thanks, I use clear view very sparingly as a global correction, I find any setting over about 20 looks "wrong" - to me. That being said, I use it with control points where the control seems more gently calibrated. Agree about Silver Efex, it's the subject of the next video. I hope you're right about the enhanced U Point tech and XD2. Both are impressive.

Quite right and well spotted. The controls on the control point mirror the ones under the control point list. These are local controls but their effect is merged by the diffusion slider at 100% with the area of the picture local to the control point. The output sharpening strength slider I used in the video would apply to the whole picture without diffusion.

The conversion from RAW to Tiff doesn’t make any difference in itself. The only sharpening outside of lens sharpening is the corrective sharpening applied in demosaicing. But the image keeps the settings applied in PL7, so if you apply a preset that includes sharpening then that will be carried across. So always check to make sure the lens sharpness correction isn’t applied.

My pleasure!

Thank you! I start with optical corrections only. I'm going the route of using Nik for output sharpening. It seems to allow more control and it's nicely calibrated, so easier to get a natural looking finish.

If the Colour Rendering panel is deactivated then Photolab is using the Neutral Colour Profile as a default. For me, you need to choose the best Colour Profile for the shot as a first step as it impacts colour and tone of the image. Don't forget that DXO lets you use dcp profiles in Photolab. If you have difficult images eg overexposed and want to recover highlights a Linear dcp profile will give you the best starting point. It's a 2 min job to create a linear profile using the free Adobe DNG converter and DNG Editor. Personal opinion, but If you have Topaz Photo AI then this is far superior to NIK Presharpener, I have both so.. Topaz will take care of any motion blur in a shot, has AI masking to quickly and accurately target sharpening to specific parts of the image etc. I have found it best to always use DeepPrimeXD noise reduction (lower the force details slider if you see any artifacts) on all images as DeepPrime/XD changes the rendering engine (uniquely in DXO, noise reduction is applied during the demosaic process and you achieve a better raw conversion, which is also why you can't see the effect of noise reduction on the whole image only in the Noise reduction preview window🙂). I also reduce lens Softness to -3 so that Topaz can do the majority of the sharpening. I get better results like this but YMMV.

@@ianyorke2617 All good but note for Apple users ,the Adobe DNG Profile editor hasn't been updated since 2012 and no longer works on Mac OS. I used to use it to generate profiles for my IR converted camera.

Thank you, You can create new control points - where it lists the control points there are four icons, control point, control line, polygonal mask and luminosity mask. Below the list of control points there are three icons, invert selected local adjustment, duplicate local adjustment and bin local adjustment. You need to be in the top row above the list of control points, simply click the control point icon and drop it on the picture. The only setting that will be applied is diffusion at 100%. which smooths the control point settings into the neighbouring pixels. You can alter this setting to taste.

@@chriswrightphotographs Thanks Chris - I'll check it out. I have applied more than one control point in the past, but they were all linked to the same settings. Success - I just tried it again and all was fine....each control point was separately controlled. I was probably using the upper sharpening controls earlier and getting a global effect, rather than the bottom (below the list of control points) for a local effect.

Glad it was helpful! I think you’re right about wildlife photography, local adjustment in Nik Sharpener would give more choices than PL 7

Not knowingly, but I have some stitched panoramas of the Gorafe desert that I’ve been meaning to revisit, I’ll try this, thanks for mentioning it!

Glad you enjoyed it! I’m afraid I ate the food..

I've never used Topaz Noise AI, so I can't give a subjective assessment. What I can say from direct experience is that Noise Reduction in PhotoLab 7 and PureRAW is still considerably better than that in Lightroom, but Adobe are closing what used to be a huge gap. I've heard/read that Noise AI is pretty effective. There is a new Noise Reduction option in PureRAW, XD2 which is slightly more aggressive but allows sharpening to be modified to four levels according to taste. I'd expect that to turn up in PL8.

Thank you!

I have topaz DeNoise and Photo AI (which uses the same tech). It works very well (and with any file type), but I prefer DxO DeepPRIME XD for RAW NR (if needed). Whenever you use any such enhancements (not just NR, but sharpening and Gigapixel in the case of Topaz), you need to be careful not to overdo it, as it can produce some weird artifacts.

Interesting and very logical. How are you finding Topaz AI? I’ve heard very mixed reports but never tried it myself. Intrigued! Regarding the Lightroom mid tones question, I’m pretty sure I can get equivalent corrections with a combo of filters in Color Efex. Might be more complicated though. I’ll test and video - not next week, but week after. “The best filters for landscape Photography”

@@chriswrightphotographs Sorry for the delay - I just got several emails from DxO telling me of their 20th anniversary - splendid - and more to the point, offering a 20% discount on all of their software, so I've just purchased Nik 7, and I'll be installing it next and trying out your suggestion. The Viewpoint software can wait until black friday as I don't have much of a need for it since I can use the pared down tools already available in PL7. As to Topaz photo AI - it is useful, but often I turn the sharpen effect down from the automatic level applied. I like the fact that it comprises several modules in the one program. The upscale seems pretty good and I'm no longer as leery of cropping into a smaller detail in an image. The facial enhancement is ok, but I don't have much need for it as it's mostly sharpening that I use since I'm using either a 100mm macro or the variable zoom producing a shallow depth of field and it doesn't take much motion either from me or a breeze to blur an image. The D500 is an APS-C sensor, so the angle of view is narrowed as well. Again, thanks for your videos - I've sent links to several of my photo friends who've liked them as well.

Yes, in multiple languages! Thanks for the recommendations, much appreciated!

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn’t, feature it as the intention was to take that tiff to Nik Collection and demo sharpening options there. But length deterred me - I’ll do that video for next week.

Thanks Richard, it's becoming an obsession - I'm actually weighing lenses. And food!

Apparently this is a known issue with Photoshop Elements - I found this solution on the Adobe forum - let me know if to works for you? community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-elements-discussions/digital-pen-not-working-in-photoshop-elements/td-p/12005685

I understand, $159 is a lot of money. These companies work to pretty tight margins and all we can do if price/value doesn’t work for us is go elsewhere. Not sure the iPhone is a fair comparison, it’s a phone not a photo processing app and costs about 5 times as much. (That might be a minority opinion though!) Good luck with the hunt!

@@chriswrightphotographs Thank you for the response, Chris. Do any of DXO peers have the same model that you know of? Why not just change to a subscription model.

@@sv0616 If we're talking about DxO ie. including PhotoLab, ViewPoint etc, the only other companies I have in depth experience of are Adobe, Capture One and Luminar. DxO (PhotoLab) compares favourably with Adobe if you upgrade every other version, but it doesn't support layer based editing. so there's that. When I was a commercial photographer in the UK I used Capture One, it is functionally excellent but there is no upgrade path - what you buy, you keep at €349 - they have a tiered subscription model too, the cheapest being €18.25 a month. I opted to move from Capture One to a hybrid workflow of DxO and Adobe depending what I am trying to achieve. I won't comment on Luminar because they have moved a long way from the versions I am familiar with so any comment I make now would be ill informed and probably unfair! I guess the reason the pricing plans for all vendors are so complicated is they don't find it helpful to sales to be compared solely on price. Comparing like for like is practically impossible so I assess the upsides against price - DxO excellent at core function (RAW Processing), Stable, integrates well with Adobe, short learning curve. Adobe, feature rich, affordable, for Photoshop a nearly endless learning curve! Capture One, competitive with DxO, Expensive. If all software cost the same, and I had endless finances, I'd use DxO for RAW processing, Capture One for studio work, Photoshop for layer based editing. Because finances proved not to be endless, something had to give and I elected to drop Capture One. I still think it's excellent but I can't afford it! Comparing Nik is hard because as far as I know it's one of a kind. DxO have completely rewritten the codebase and it works really well as a user friendly finishing tool. The results in the last two versions are of professional standard although it's still possible for the user to create horrible effects! Also worth bearing in mind that the image processing industry is dominated by Adobe, and a wise person would look to evidence of financial stability before buying into a rival software. DxO appear to have that, as do Capture One. Also check forums and google "problems with xxxx" for competitor software, bearing in mind of course that people find it easier to complain than praise! Not sure if this is helpful, and apologies for length!

In some cases, this is to do with changing the color space - so for example Adobe RGB to sRGB is a step down in terms of the number of colours supported. Generally we shoot and edit in the widest possible format. But when you export for print or screen any colour in the original format that are not found in the destination format will be swapped out for a neighbouring tone. In DxO you may be using the DxO Wide Gamut which is comparable with Adobe RGB. This situation is brought about because legacy monitors and printers don't support wide gamut color spaces. The good news is that situation is changing so more and more monitors and platforms such as instagram are supporting the AdobeHDR standard. sRGB may be approaching end of useful life although if you want your image to be viewed reliable on every possible platform its still the way to go.

@@chriswrightphotographs Logically, you are right, but if I create a similar image in Adobe Camera Raw, then when exporting I will not encounter a displacement of all these three points. That's the problem. At least if you look at this experiment visually. In adobe camera raw, I use a line profile of my camera, created in adobe dng editor, based on any of my camera files.

@@chriswrightphotographs And yes - when exporting to tiff, I choose Adobe rgb, so that I can then look at such a file in the same Adobe Photoshop program, or even in DxO itself. The result is depressing. It's the same as if I saved tiff, or jpg to srgb. The image is one to one, as if I were doing the same thing in rawtherapee.

Have you tried to use the icc profile in PL? The only time I use custom profiles is for infrared.

The Reshape tool is part of ViewPoint, it is activated in PL7 by installing Viewpoint on the same computer.

Thanks for the thoughtful input. One further thought - ACR has no equivalent in the Nik Collection. If you are shooting in RAW format then preliminary processing of the RAW file can be done in ACR, Lightroom or DxO PhotoLab and the results "finished off" in Photoshop or the Nik Collection. The equivalent workflow to (ACR and Photoshop) or (Lightroom and Photoshop) is (PhotoLab and Nik Collection). A strength of the Nik Collection is that it is also very well integrated with Photoshop so can be and often is used in the Adobe Workflow as well. Also worth noting that DxO's PureRAW product delivers arguably better demosaicing and noise reduction than ACR or Lightroom and can be used as a pre-processor in the Adobe workflow.

Thank you, that's great to hear!

The major updates are what you pay for, issued once per year. Within that, minor updates are not charged. It sounds as though you bought v6 midway through the cycle (late in 2023). A lot of people have done this, some within weeks of the major version upgrade which is a bitter pill to swallow, however DxO don't hide this, and other manufacturers have similar terms on upgrades.

I purchased Nik Collection 6 about six - seven months ago and also felt that more of a break to upgrade should have been given to customers like us. I contacted DxO and they wouldn’t budge.

It’s a 12 month cycle. You bought in the first half and expect a free upgrade? You’re not alone, but the cost of doing business this way would inevitably push the price of the software up. Personally I’d rather it stayed affordable and I can opt to upgrade once or twice every two years.

The views from the top of mountains, unless they consist of more mountains are hard to turn into good images. I look for standout features, repeating patterns and light. The other thing is the quality of the light. My hikes in Spain usually get me to the top around midday when the light is at its worst. My best pictures are shot early morning. Which means camping out. Not an everyday option!

@@chriswrightphotographs One saving grace is that many Buddhist temples are built on high ground so the architecture and statues can sometimes be used as foreground.

Glad it was helpful!

I understand your point. It is one that plenty have made over the years. Nik offer a free upgrade if you buy within 7 days of a new release and there are far more onerous terms available with other companies. I moved away from Capture One myself for similar reasons. I guess every company looks closely at every other company’s pricing and make decisions based on perceived value. We as customers can vote with our feet if we think they got it wrong.

Your trajectory with Nik Collection is very similar to mine - I used Silver Efex for years before starting to dabble with Color Efex. My take is this - Color Efex gives us a high level/accessible way of achieving things that would otherwise require detailed knowledge of photoshop/affinity to achieve in a much longer and more complex fashion. The use of control points and lines to target a filter on a specific area is not achievable with PhotoLab because you don't have the filters. Similarly stacking filters and effects in the way I demonstrate cannot be done on PhotoLab - Obviously you can have multiple control points, but you don't have the filters. There are also some things that I'm sure will arrive in PhotoLab in due course - elliptical control points, hsl as a filter, the new outline tool, ClearView as a filter. For me, this update has made Color Efex a usable and regular addition to my workflow. Even if I'm working in Photoshop, I don't feel I'm compromising anything by branching into Color Efex. My gut feeling is I should have looked harder, earlier, but my loss!

@@chriswrightphotographs Thanks for your reply, I've downloaded Nik 7 trial and will see how I get on.

Thank you , I’m glad the video has been useful!

What was the problem? Might be useful to others with similar set ups?

@@chriswrightphotographs I don’t know the underlying tech problem. It manifested itself by me being unable to open most of the apps either standalone or as plugins for Capture One. I couldn’t open the main ones like ColourFX or SilverFX but the smaller ones such as Define or Perspective were OK. My MacBook Pro is a 2017 model with 16GB of RAM. The DxO developers sent me zip files 3 times over a period of 6 months that monitored what was happening and each time asked me to uninstall the version I had and install the latest, updated version. Didn’t work so in the end they sent me instructions to open Terminal and enter instructions to revise some code. It worked.

Strange. I found performance on my old MacBook Pro became dismal, and even on my intel based Mac mini it’s not terribly fast but usable. I bought an M3 based MacBook a couple of months ago and performance is way better.

@@chriswrightphotographs Now it works, it’s useable. Not super fast but good enough for me. No idea why the software wouldn’t even open before the fix. I’m thinking of getting a Mac Mini to make it easier/cheaper to upgrade the computer in future. Just waiting for the next gen to be released.

Yes, Mac Mini is the most bang for your buck in the Apple range. I’m waiting for the Mac Studio with M3 chip. More expensive, but better for video editing. Rumour was June release but I haven’t heard anything for a month or so.

I ‘n not sure I agree that an AI selection tool would signify maturity. As a sometime software engineer I recognise value in good design and progressive enhancement. And of course the quality of the images that can be produced. Some AI tools are excellent, such as Photoshops generative AI, but not all and I can think of one company who have boasted about AI for several years now. Their software I’m afraid is a mess. So far as software design is concerned give me slow and stable progress and I’m happy.

@@chriswrightphotographs I see. For me, these are extremely incremental changes to justify an upgrade for 90 bucks. A year of LR/PS is $99 (i believe, if you pay up front for a year).

@@chriswrightphotographs couldn't agree more!

Thanks Alexy!

Pretty much. They have done a great job with this update, building out from the unified code base completed last year. Naturally this raises expectations for next year, but DxO seem to have the right approach - slowly and carefully is better than rushing at new features for the sake of it.

Yes, it can change the balance of the histogram for sure. So if you crop to a predominantly dark area of the picture you’ll see the histogram move to the left. Good point, thanks for making it.

Thanks!

Excellent! Glad it's useful, when I relaunched this channel last November, I worried that mountain photography might not be of interest to enough people. I'm very happy to be proved wrong! One of the real benefits of UA-cam for creators is the community.