The folks over at Nik Software have just released Color Efex Pro 4, so I thought it might be a good idea to do a video on some of the new features. I can already tell you that if you’re a Color Efex Pro 3 user, there’s one new feature that’s by itself worth the upgrade price: the ability to stack effects on top of each other! And if you’re new to Color Efex Pro, the video will give you an idea as to what it can do.

Color Efex Pro is one of Nik’s flagship products and is widely used by landscape and portrait photographers worldwide, to enhance their images. There’s an array of 55 filters, ranging from practical and time-saving (such as Dynamic Skin Softener) to creative (such as the new film simulation presets). The video below only shows a couple of effects. For a full list, check out the Nik Website. The video also features some of the advantages of using Color Efex Pro as a Smart Filter in Photoshop.* Tip: make sure to watch the video fullscreen by clicking the fullscreen button in the video player interface (I also had to break the video up in two parts).

If you’re interested in more, I’ll be doing a free English Color Efex Pro webinar for Nik on October 19th. For registrations, go to the UK site of Nik Software (choose the UK flag from the top right of the main www.niksoftware.com site), select Webinars & Training from the Training tab and you’ll find my training under the ‘Webinar Specials’ section. I’ll also be giving the same webinar in Dutch that day. Registration for that webinar can be done through this link.

One more thing: if you’re from outside of Europe, and you’re interested in buying Color Efex Pro 4, or any other of the Nik plugins, using discount code MORETHANWORDS15 in the online Nik Software US Store, will get you 15% off!

* Color Efex Pro can be bought as a separate plugin, in which case it works in Aperture, Lightroom and Photoshop. You can also buy it as part of a bundle, of which there exist three:
The Complete Collection for Lightroom, the Complete Collection for Aperture and the Complete Collection for Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop. The first two will only work in their respective host program, while the latter works in any of the three programs. While the actual effects are the same and you can therefore create entirely the same image with Color Efex in Lightroom as you can in Aperture or in Photoshop, using Color Efex Pro (or any other Nik filter, for that matter) in Photoshop allows for some extra cool features, such as using it as a Smart Filter. Smart Filters in Photoshop have a lot of advantages, so I thought it would be cool to include some of those in the video as well.

Ok, I know that I should probably rename this to ‘Lightroom Tip of The Every Other Odd Week’, but still… here’s a short video with a quick tip you might enjoy.

© Ake Vandervelden

Update: if you like this tutorial, then also check out this one, in which I take the template a notch up

When I saw the beautiful pictures and the beautiful print template that my talented fellow-photographer Ake Vandervelden had made, I asked her if she’d done it in Lightroom. She replied to me she had made it in Photoshop (with a lot of hard work) and that she had no idea if this could be pulled off in Lightroom.

Well, actually, it can… It’s just one of those occasions where you have to think Lightrooms different modules through. And with some creativity, and some ‘out of the box’, or should I say ‘out of the modules’-thinking, you can make this work and then save it as a Print Template, and never have to worry about doing this in Photoshop again… We will be adding the text with the… Slideshow module, of all things!

There’s a lot of advantages to keeping it in Lightroom:

• you don’t have to own (or open) Photoshop
• you don’t have to create a new (big) Photoshop file
• you can change your mind about which pictures to add, and where to put them
• you can easily make minor tweaks to the print template, and update the template with your new tweaks or save the tweaked version as a different template. Want one without white space between the pictures? Just make a new template…

Here’s a video explaining how you create this effect yourself. No Photoshop or Indesign was used during this movie .

Look ma, only Lightroom from MoreThanWords on Vimeo.

It’s actually the very first video tutorial I made (writing this down would have been far too long), so bear with me if not everything is perfect. I hope to be posting more ‘how-to’ videos because there’s a ton of stuff you can do in Lightroom.

For those of you who have bought my (Dutch) book on Lightroom: this technique is similar to the one discussed on page 192, but it goes even further!

In this video, I did everything in Lightroom, just to show you that it’s possible. However, there are some issues with adding text through the Slideshow Module: the biggest one is that it works okay for smaller sized prints. If you would want to make something poster-sized, you run the risk of running into the limitations of the Slideshow JPG Export feature. In an upcoming blogpost, I will show you that, with a little use of Photoshop (for those who have it), it’s possible to speed up the workflow even more and circumvene the resolution limit of the Slideshow Module text, while maintaining Lightrooms flexibility.

P.S. In my video, you will see the ‘Iran’ text centered in the frame. If you want to have it slightly above the center (like ‘Juliaan’ on Akes template), you can make use of the crop tool to make a square crop of the text and in the mean time reposition the text where you like.
P.P.S. Just a quick note to all you overseas visitors. I am planning on posting more English videos like this. So keep checking every once in a while!