NIK Software - Color Efex Pro 4

I've been Beta Testing NIK Softwares Color Efex Pro 4
It's looking great and should be available very soon.

I'll post a brief review shortly...

NIK Softwares Snapseed

NIK have just launched an iPad application that lets you tweak photos to perfection with Tune Image or selectively adjust only a part of your photo with revolutionary Control Points. Add incredible effects with innovative filters like Drama, Vintage, and Grunge. Share photos with your friends and family with social network support, or print your photos directly in Snapseed.

I have tried it out on one of my recent snaps from Yosemite National Park and you can see the before and after versions below. There are countless options to play with and some informative instructional videos on NIKs site Snapseed 

My example shot had 'drama' added and then 'grunge' which adds some textures and vignette effects, it's fun to use and innovative

Upper Yosemite Falls from Swinging Bridge (Before)

Upper Yosemite Falls from Swinging Bridge (after Snapseed)

Panasonic Lumix LX5

If you are looking for a backup camera for your DSLR, for the times when you just can't be bothered to lug around all that heavy kit... consider the LX5

Is this compact as good as a dedicated DSLR? - no, of course not, but it is a very capable camera with excellent performance for a compact model. It has a fast Leica Lens and the sensibly 'low' resolution of 10 MB allows digital noise to be kept under control.

NIK HDR Efex Pro Ships

NIK Software have started to ship their HDR software - HDR Efex Pro.  I have completed a quick side by side comparison of HDR Efex Pro and Photomatix Pro and I would say that NIK is comparing very well. 

Out of the box NIK HDR Efex Pro manages very realistic and natural looking HDR renditions. There are a large number of pre-sets available to help the user 'play' with the effects possible. Each Pre-Set could be achieved through the adjustment sliders and clicking on a preset results in the sliders positioning themselves as necessary. This helps the user get to grips with the range of styles achievable quickly... although some of the pre-sets can result in some tacky looking renders :-)

HDR Efex Pro is a little slower than Photomatix on my machine (Mac Pro Quad Core 266 with 8GB RAM) but is usable...

I experimented with the software by re-visiting a recent HDR and attempting to re-render with HDR Efex Pro. The result looked better than my previous post production which was achieved after a significant amount of work in Photomatix. Here are the shots for reference, which do you prefer?

Photomatix Pro

NIK Softwares HDR Efex PRo

Photomatix Pro Vs Nik HDR Efex Pro

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is gaining in popularity. I have access to both Photomatix Pro and NIK Softwares's HDR Efex Pro.

I have taken three exposures of a scene, metering one stop over and under to capture detail in both foreground and sky.

The location is Coniston Water in the Lake District. All three shots were taken with the camera mounted on a Tripod to help alignment in the HDR software.

These three shots were exported to Photomatix Pro and an HDR image generated with default settings see below

+1 EV

 

0 EV

-1 EV

Photomatix Pro (default Settings) NIK HDR Efex Pro