Nik Color Efex Pro 3

[terryturner]

I'm curious how many here use Nik Color Efex Pro 3 and what your thoughts are. This seems like a dynamic set of filters. My initial goal was to purchase a good skin softening program and portraiture seems to do that fairly well. Then I began to look at Nik and became very impressed with what they have. They ave three products with varying numbers of filters from 99.00 to 299.00. They have a skin softening filter in the 299.00 product, but thats more than I want to spend. If that filter was in the 159.00 version it would be a slam dunk for me. Anyway, would like any comments pro or con.

THANKS!

Terry

[mooredriven]

I've just started using Capture NX, and thought about purchasing Nik Color Efex 2. I've read some reviews online, and in general they are positive. I think the $299 price for Efex 3 could only be justified by professional photographers. At least in my opinion.

Dale

[SaundraU]

I have Color Efix 2 and am finding that I barley use them

[rwwright]

i have it and use it occasionally. for skin softing what about kodak's gem product

[txphotog]

I have Color Efex 3.0 and it is worth its weight in gold. It speeds up my work flow when softing skin and it does a great job.

[Detonate]

Originally Posted by SaundraU

I have Color Efix 2 and am finding that I barley use them

Version 2 is crap! I got it free with something else I bought. Never thought I'd use a Nik product again.

But 3 is fantastic! Worth a look for sure.

The skin softening is great, but not as good as Kodaks. The problem with Kodak's is that you need to really mask the image so that you only apply the effect to the skin.

The nik version does the masking for you based on color selector, and you can use negative control points to furth control the effect.

But the overall algorith they use does not produce as pleasing of an effect as Kodaks.

In the end I usually just use the Nik version. The time it saves is more valuable than the slight advantage Kodak has in quality.

I can say enough good things about the other filters as well.

[rwwright]

detonate, i probably am not as critical as you are, but i have not noticed issues requiring me to mask the kodak results. I understood that it has an algorithm that makes it work mainly on skin tones. (I may have used it mainly on shots where there was not a lot of skin but face)

[Detonate]

Try this.

Duplicate the background layer.
Start the plugin.
Click on default settings.
Apply

Then hide and unhide your new layer. You should see some softening across the entire image.

[daveb]

I use the kodak filter a lot and really like. But lately it has been pushed to the back for more general work by Portiture. That product is quick and dirty and gets the job done.

My workflow for kodak is a lot more time consuming because I am usually doing "higher quality" work with it.