36 4 April 2020 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
The ten new Film
Types are a very
welcome additionSilver Efex Pro is one of the best plug-ins
for enhancing black & white images.
Geoff Harris is your guide to the latest
version, with ten great new fi lm emulations
machine
T
here are now myriad ways
to convert and edit black
& white images, but Silver
Efex Pro is still hard to
beat. It works as both a standalone
program and a plug-in for Lightroom,
Photoshop and more, and comes as
part of the Nik Collection of editing
tools. The latest version has ten new
emulations of classic black & white
analogue fi lm: Adox Silver Max 21, Agfa
Scala 200x, Bergger BRF 400 Plus,
Foma 100, Fuji Neopan 400, Ilford
Pan 100 and 400, Polaroid 667 and
672, and Rollei 100 Tonal. Read on to
discover how get to grips with these
emulations, and how to get the most
from Silver Efex Pro generally.Si lver
Technique SILVER EFEX PRO
The basics
As mentioned, you can work with Silver Efex Pro as a
standalone program as part of the Nik Collection, but
to get the most of the new fi lm emulations, and much
else besides, we recommend opening it as a plug-in for
your main editor, in this case Adobe Lightroom. To
benefi t from the colour sensitivity fi lters and powerful
grain-control fi lters in Silver Efex Pro, it’s best to make
essential adjustments to your original, colour raw
image in Lightroom. You then carry out the black &
white conversion, and subsequent editing of the image,
by opening Silver Efex Pro as a plug-in, as our
screenshot above shows (simply right click on the
original and you should be able to edit it in Silver Efex
Pro, as a converted black & white image).
When fi nished, you can save it back into Lightroom
for further editing or output it. Using Silver Efex Pro
as a standalone program to tweak existing black &
white JPEG images will work to a degree, but it’s a bit
like buying a high-performance car and never getting
above a low gear.Finding the new
fi lm emulations
As with so much modern software,
the maker DxO has really packed
in the features, which is great, but
they are not always immediately
obvious. The black & white fi lm
emulations are located towards the
bottom of the panel on the right
and are labelled Film Types. Click
the arrow to reveal them. The new
fi lm types are, helpfully, listed
under ‘New.’ Easy enough, but
remember that as soon as you
hover your mouse over the name
of a fi lm type it is applied to the
image, so you get a sense of
whether it works.
To go back to your original image
without Film Types applied, click
Neutral. Some other fundamentally
important tools in this panel are
the Grain and Sensitivity options,
the Colour Filter and Selective
Adjustments. If you are not happy
with the exposure and contrast in
your imported image, you can also
adjust them with the Preset Library
over to the left of the main screen.‘Silver Efex Pro has some very smart tools for
controlling all aspects of digital grain’