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...

Eye-Fi Card

I recently picked up a 4GB Eye-Fi memory card that lets you upload images straight from Camera to on-line resources such as Facebook and Flickr and also to folders on computers connected.

The installation was a little more painful than I had hoped... The card kept being ejected whilst the software was copying across and even ejected itself half-way through a firmware update... which was not ideal.

Eye-Fi are planning to launch connectivity to mobile phones and iPads later this year which will add even more useful functionality.

I'll write up a full review when I have had a chance to use the card for a while in my Panasonic LX5

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.

Purchased HDR Efex Pro

Having played around with NIK Softwares HDR Efex Pro for a week or so, I decided to go ahead and buy a licence. I have Photomatix Pro 4.1 but found the ease of use of HDR Efex Pro and the photo-realistic results useful. 

The Alignment and de-ghosting features are not perfect, but they can usually be coerced into producing a good render with a little bit of experimentation.

i.e. Sometime the Alignment option is best left off when images are already aligned (e.g. taken on a tripod) and even in NIK's own documentation they make reference to de-ghosting sometimes being better off than on.

Overall I am pleased with HDR Efex Pro and being a frequent user of their other great applications I find the interface powerful and familiar.

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