Silver Efex Pro II — Part ONE

We all know that : we look at our pictures and we have to decide the best way to go. “Should I edit this one in colors or black and white ?”
It sounds like a song Should I stay or should I go by the The Clash (click here for the music).

Well when I want a picture in B&W for it has to be timeless ot to focus on feelings, I usually edit my raw-file in photoshop ( I am a CS5 user) and do all what I have to do before I turn it into B&W. And my favorite software is a plugin from NIK-Software called Silver Efex Pro II.

But before I go deeper, I think the best is to take a picture and to show you what SEP can do for you !

So here is the start picture :

Then you go to Filter > NIK-Collection > Silver Efex Pro 2

The plugins dashboard looks like this:

And now let’s have a look at the tools and the way to play with them.

In the middle you see the picture in neutral.

On the left, you see your picture with presets :

37 presets are at your disposal and they are a good way to start. Choose one you like but don’t consider this choice as the result, only as a direction. By clicking on it the image in the center is affected and the presets applies. Here, I have selected preset 036 and you can see how the look of the picture picture changes.

And now the game can start by using the tools on the right side :

Tomorrow, I will write about these tools (my wife is now waiting for me to have diner! Sorry folks! 🙂 )

So stay tuned!

More to come…

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