If you’re interested in learning what new features Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 has in store, check out Thursday’s webinar. This one is in Dutch, but there will be another one in English later this month. More about that in due time. For the Dutch webinar, you can register here. Best of all, it’s completely free!

English Readers: this blogpost is about a Dutch article, webinar and workshop I’ll be doing in March on B&W conversion techniques

Artikel over Zwartwit in Shoot

Degenen die deze blog al wat langer volgen, weten dat ik een voorliefde heb voor zwartwit. Het was dan ook met veel plezier dat ik voor de Shoot van deze maand een artikel van 8 bladzijden schreef over mijn favoriete digitaal zwartwit. Shoot ligt nu in de krantenwinkel. Je kan hem zo herkennen aan de zwartwit-foto van de knappe Megan, geen onbekende voor wie al eens een workshop volgde. De foto werd geconverteerd naar zwartwit met Silver Efex Pro 2.

Gratis webinar over Silver Efex Pro

Wie meer wil weten over Silver Efex, is bij deze van harte uitgenodigd op de webinar die ik op donderdag 3 maart, 20u ‘s avonds geef over deze nieuwe Lightroom, Aperture en Photoshop plugin. De webinar duurt ongeveer drie kwartier + een vragenronde (via chat) van een kwartiertje. Gratis inschrijven kan via deze link.

Shoot Session over zwartwit-conversie

Hoor je het liever allemaal eens face-to-face, inclusief de volledige Lightroom & Photoshop workflow om tot sprekende zwartwit-beelden te komen, kom dan naar de Shoot-Session over Zwartwit-fotografie. De eerste datum van 5 maart was in amper één week uitverkocht, zodat we een tweede datum – eveneens in Gent – ingelast hebben op zaterdag 12 maart, van 13u30 tot 17u30.

Op het programma staan ondermeer:

• Tips voor de opname
• Zwartwit-conversietechnieken in Lightroom & Photoshop
• Interessante plugins
• Speciale technieken zoals dubbele raw-conversies, werken met laagmaskers, HDR-opnames
• Professioneel doordrukken en tegenhouden met het exclusieve MoreThanWords Photoshop Palet
• Afwerkingstechnieken: toning & negatiefranden toevoegen
• Tips voor afdrukken en keuze van papiersoorten

We demonstreren er tevens de Epson 2880 en 3880, twee fenomenale zwartwit-printers. De prijs voor deze workshop bedraagt 89 €, inclusief drank, uitgebreide syllabus en een DVD met het MoreThanWords Photoshop Palet. Meer info en inschrijven kan via deze link.

En tenslotte…

Ik hoop jullie eind deze maand nog een ander zwartwit-initiatief aan te kondigen. Geen tijdschrift-artikel, geen webinar en ook geen workshop… Rarara

From my analogue days on, I’ve always been a Black & White aficionado. When I switched to digital, I discovered digital B&W was one very complex matter: the early printers had a hard time producing decent, neutral black & white prints and software companies… well, they mostly seemed to cater to those of us interested in color. Digital B&W was the exclusive playground of digital alchemists, using secret Channel Mixer formulas in Photoshop. Then came Photoshop CS3 with the B&W Adjustment layer, which made B&W in the binary world a lot more intuitive. And then came Nik with the first incarnation of Silver Efex Pro, a dedicated B&W plugin for Lightroom & Photoshop. It had been created from the ground up with the analogue photographer in mind and… it showed! I remember I thought I had never seen a first version of a software package that looked so complete: Ansel Adam’s zone system? Check! Toning controls? Check! Presets to quickly get you started? Check! Accurate simulations of your favorite analogue film, including it’s grain structure? Check! Localized control (think millimeter-precisie dodging & burning) without the need of making complex selections? Check!

Needless to say Silver Efex Pro quickly became a frequent guest in my overall Lightroom & Photoshop B&W workflow. I also remember thinking ‘What on earth will they come up with for version 2?’. Well, I’ve had the opportunity to play around with a beta version for some time and I can only say: the best just got even better. There’s simply more of everything that made SEP 1 so noticeable. Not only more presets, but especially: more control. You now have the option of targeting the Brightness and the Structure of the Midtones, Highlights and Shadows separately. There’s a new Dynamic Brightness slider that… dynamically adjusts brightness, taking into account the whole scene, instead of simply uniformly increasing or decreasing it. Also new is a History Browser that allows you to choose a specific history state as the ‘Before view’, much like Lightroom’s History Palette allows you to.

Those of you who used to print their frames with a negative border will be pleased to see that option is now available from within the plugin, as you can see from the screenshot. There are fourteen base versions to choose from and you can tweak them further with a randomize button. Slightly less messy – but admittedly slightly less adventurous – than filing out your negative carrier in the darkroom days! The frames have been created to suit any orientation of photograph. Just remember: if you want to stay (at least somewhat) true to analogue tradition, you should only use them on uncropped images

Silver Efex Pro 2 should be available in February. In Europe, the price is 199 € including VAT but… there’s currently a 10% discount for version 1 with a free (downloadable) upgrade to version two when that is available. Silver Efex Pro is also available as part of Nik’s Complete Collection.

More info over at www.niksoftware.com. I’ll also be doing a Dutch webinar on Silver Efex Pro in march. Check the blog for further details on that.

Wie zondag nog niet weet waarheen moet beslist een kijkje komen nemen op de Macbeurs in Genk. 40 verschillende workshops, demo’s en standen. Georganiseerd door de immer sympathieke mensen van Mac Limburg.

Ondergetekende geeft er samen met partner-in-crime Jürgen Doom om 11 uur een smaakmakertje voor de populaire  ‘From Speedlight to Lightroom’ workshop over werken met reportageflitsers en post-processing in Lightroom. Om 14u15 kom ik nog een uurtje solo terug over de Lightroom-Photoshop workflow. Onder de aanwezigen tijdens de workshops verloot ik een exemplaar van HDR Efex Pro (waarde: 159,95 €), de nieuwe HDR plugin van Nik Software.

Ingang voor de beurs is amper 5 €. Meer info op de site van de Macbeurs. Allen daarheen!

A while ago, I did a (quite popular) blogpost on how you can ‘fade’ Lightroom presets if their effect is too strong. In short, there used to be two options:

1) ‘Reverse engineering the preset’

In this option, you try to see what variables the preset changes and then make a new preset that puts the sliders at a lower amount. However, this isn’t always so easy: some presets can be quite elaborate and can change a number of sliders and even include things such as graduated filters! ….

2) Fading in Photoshop

The easier way I explained in the blogpost is to apply the preset to a Virtual Copy, then select both Master and Virtual Copy and use the ‘Edit in > Open as Layers in Photoshop’ command to … well, open the two files as one layered Photoshop document.

Then, in Photoshop, you can change the Opacity of the top layer, allowing you to dial in just the desired amount of preset. Add to that the power of layer masking and you have total control over the strength of the preset. After having made the right mix, all you have to do is merge the two layers, maybe change the bit depth to 8 bits per channel (if you do not plan on doing any further editing) and hit the Save button, which will return your ‘mixed’ file to Lightroom.

The biggest drawback of this ‘technique’ is that it breaks the non·destructive workflow (you wind up with a TIFF in stead of a raw file) and that, as with all external edits, it inflates your file sizes. That’s why I suggest you flatten the file and turn it into 8 bits per channel. If you find yourself doing that a lot, you might even want to write a Photoshop Action that does just those couple of steps.

Also, you might want to delete the Virtual Copy you made: you don’t need it anymore and while VC’s don’t use a lot of space in the Lightroom database, their previews do take up space in Lightrooms Preview file! I still use this technique quite a lot, but many times I thought how easy it would be to be able to just fade a preset in Lightroom!

Now, one of the big advantages of using Lightroom is that there are lots of people making plugins and… low and behold, recently Jarno Heikkinen from Knobroom came up with a plugin called ‘The Fader’. It’s free and you can download it here. So now, there’s a third way: using The Fader!

3) Non-destructive fading in Lightroom using ‘The Fader’

Using The Fader is very simple: if you see from the Navigator window that a preset will have a nice but too strong effect (like the Color Creative – Old Polar preset from the standard Lightroom Presets in this case), don’t apply it straight away.

Instead, after having installed the plugin, select the picture and choose File > Plugin Extras > The Fader.

In the left dropdown list, select the Preset Folder (in this case ‘Lightroom Presets’) and then from the right dropdown list, select the actual preset. The fade command lets you fade between zero to 100, and even beyond that. Values below 0 or over 100 are interpolations, and should be used with caution.

You can even turn the scaled down effect into a new preset, by hitting the +-button of the Presets Panel when you’re done with the plugin. Some things are non-scalable, however, such as any graduated filters that might be included in the preset. In that case, the two radio buttons below allow you to choose which image will be the base for the fading: ‘Use image as master’ uses the original image (i.e. no graduated filters will be present in the faded image). ‘Use preset as master’ will apply all non-scalable effects at 100% to the faded image… So, basically, those controls allow you to either completely include, or completely exclude non-scalable effects. Other things that cannot be faded are tone curves (not the slider ones, but the actual curve values which can be specified in preset), red eye info, dust removal and local adjustments brushes. And of course, color versus black & white mix is not interpolated, and neither are auto-exposure, are other auto-settings.

Still, even with those limitations, The Fader often does a very good job. And it does so more quickly and memory-friendly than any of the other methods do. I hope that either Jarno himself or someone over at Lightroom’s Developer team can take the plugin to the next level, allowing for complete ‘fadeability’ of all sliders (or at least the ones that are relevant) because this is definitely good news for all preset users.

As Larry David would say: ‘Pretty, pretty good!’. And in those cases where The Fader doesn’t work as planned, there’s still technique number two!