Nikmultimedia Plugins

Comments and discussions about 8bf plugins which can be use in various applications like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or Photo-Paint
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beaucamera
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Nikmultimedia Plugins

Post by beaucamera »

Does anyone have any experience using the Nikmultimedia plugins: dfine (sharpening), Color Efex Pro or Sharpenig Pro?

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

In my opinion Dfine isn't really the best noise reduction plugin. Sharpener Pro is nice if you need to sharpen for different output formats, but doesn't give you direct control over the sharpening itself. Color Efex Pro is nice for simulating effects that were done with optical filters on analog SLR cameras. Overall, I consider the nik products a bit overpriced.

beaucamera
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Lighting/Filter Plugin Choices

Post by beaucamera »

Harold, thank you for your reply. Can you give me any feedback/comparison of the following: Nik Efex Color Pro 2.0, Mystical Lighting/tint, tone & color, and PixelGenius's Photokit Color 1.2.1. I will be using 16-bit images, a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and prefer seamless integration with Photoshop CS.

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Post by HaraldHeim »

If I had to choose between those three products, I would go for the Color Efex Pro product. This is a very subjective choice, because I don't like the Dreamsuite interface very much and I don't like that Photokit has no preview and only limited options.

It depends on which effects you need the most. All three product have a different range of effects. I would consider the Color Efex result the most solid ones as far as photographic effects are concerned.

As far as I know the Photokit product works with 16bit images, but I'm not quite sure if the the nik and Auto FX products do, too.

Several of the effects that are offered by these three products can also be achieve by some freeware plugins. However, then you don't have them in one nice package, often with no 16bit support and sometimes at a lower quality.

I hope that helps.

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Post by Roo »

A 'lite' version of Nik Color Effects Pro (2.0 IE) came with my new Wacom Intuos 3 graphics tablet. Of the 8 filters this version has, I use only the 'Brilliance/Warmth' and 'Contrast Only' filters the most, although recently while working on some very old photos found just a couple of weeks ago, I have used the 'Remove Color Cast' and it does a good job, and is a whole lot faster and easier than messing with Channels, Variations, and layer blends.

I love the Brilliance/Warmth for creating a soft washed out, kind of old looking image. For me, this filter alone made the plugin worth installing.

It's a bit resource intensive, on my really old machine anyway...I'm happy to have it, but I don't think I would pay for it if it hadn't been included with hardware, because you really can get all of the same effects with a bit of time and work with Photoshop's own tools.

What the difference is bewteen my version that came with my Wacom, and the full Pro version is, I really don't know.

As far as sharpening and noise.........you can't beat Neat Image. I was turned on to this one about two weeks ago, and I swear this little tool is the best thing since Photoshop!
http://www.neatimage.com/

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