i've been using the nik collection for well over a decade because the selection tools make it easy
to produce great photography in today's video i'll share seven selection techniques you can use with
nik color efex pro 4 to improve your results hello i'm robin whalley and welcome to lenscraft
here's the image we'll be using today which i've already opened in nik color efex pro
the first technique i want to share is the global opacity adjustment which is often overlooked it's
also easy to dismiss this but it's much more important than you might realize as you'll
see later in the video i'll demonstrate this now using the pro contrast filter by increasing the
dynamic contrast slider to its maximum value this makes it easier to see what's happening
if i toggle the filter's visibility off and on you can see the effect that it's having on the
image in color efex pro the individual filters each have a control point section below them
when i expand the section you can see that there's an opacity slider with a default setting of 100
now watch what happens to the image when i gradually reduce the opacity down to zero
you can see that it's starting to hide the effect of the filter when the opacity gets down to zero
percent the filter's effect is completely hidden if i toggle the filter visibility off and on you
can see that it's not affecting the image using the opacity slider is helpful in controlling the
overall strength of the filter without needing to change any of the filter sliders but the
opacity slider also has another use because it works in conjunction with control points
control points are used to select and adjust only parts of an image in the nit collection and
they're implemented slightly differently in each of the plugins you can see what happens if i add a
control point to select the foreground rock to add the control point i first need to click the icon
showing the plus sign i can then move my mouse pointer to the position where i want to place it
then when i click you see the new control points added in that position
the way the control point works is by sampling the area of the image at its center it then uses the
luminance and colour information from that point to determine what should be selected in the image
areas with similar luminance and colour are then selected whilst other areas are excluded
you'll also see two sliders on the control point the top slider controls the size of the control
point move it to the right to make the control point larger and to the left to make it smaller
we'll be coming back to look at the other slider shortly
now because where you position the control point is so important you might want to magnify that
area i find an easy way to do this is by using the loop view that's combined in the histogram panel
this then displays the area below the mouse pointer magnified to 100
if i click and drag the control point with my mouse you can see a small cross appears on the
loop view to indicate its position for this image i'll position the control point on the lichens of
the rock watch the effect change in that area of the image as i reposition the control point
this is one of the strengths of the control point because you can get real-time feedback
as you move it around now although you get real-time feedback as you move the control point
there's also a selection mask generated that you don't see but it can be useful to make selections
the way to view the mask is by clicking the small tick box to the right of the control
point in the control point list then rather than viewing the image you see a black and white mask
the lighter areas of the mask indicate what's being selected by the control point and therefore
what's affected by the filter the lighter an area of the mask is the stronger the filter's effect
will be in that area equally the dark areas of the mask hide the filter's effect and the black
areas conceal it completely earlier we looked at the opacity slider which was set at 100 percent
notice it's now set to zero percent this happened when i added the control point to the image
it's also why the rest of the mask is now black and only the area selected by the control point
is white watch what happens when i increase the opacity to 100 percent the entire mask turns white
meaning that the filter is now affecting the entire image again if i turn off the mask view
by clicking the tick box again you can see that it's affecting the entire image when i reduce the
opacity it hides the filter's effect except for where the control point is but watch what happens
if i partially increase the opacity slider to around 40 percent now the filter is affecting
the entire image but at a lesser strength than the area selected by the control point
if we go back to the mask view you can see the overall mask is now gray rather than black
at the same time the area of the mask selected by the control point is still light because
that area is selected at full strength let's set the opacity slider back to zero percent because
there's something else i want to show you when i click on the center of the control point as though
i want to move it you can see it's got an outside edge except this isn't really the outside edge
notice that the lighter areas of the mask extend well beyond this edge what's really happening
is that the area within the circumference of the control point is being selected at full strength
then beyond this areas with similar color and luminance to the selection point are selected but
at a lower opacity the further the area is away from the control point the lower the opacity of
that selection it's this gradual feathering of the selection that helps to blend any adjustments you
make into the image in this example if i make the control point large enough to select the
lichens on the surrounding rocks it also spills over into the sky one way to control this is by
using a negative control point to add a negative control point click on the minus control point
icon i can then position my mouse pointer on the area of the sky that i want to protect and then
click this is a useful method of protecting areas of the image from unwanted adjustments to see how
these different masks work together click the icon at the top right of the control point list this
toggles the mask view for all the control points off and on rather than individual control points
if you don't do this you'll be looking at the effect of individual masks which can be confusing
when you look at the negative control point you can see that it has the same design as
the positive control point the only difference between the two is the second slider below the
size adjustment on the negative control point the opacity is now set to zero percent so it hides
the filter's effect whilst on the positive control point this opacity slider is set to 100 so you see
the effect if i increase the opacity slider on the negative control point to 100 percent you can see
that it's then selecting part of the image then if i reduce the opacity on the positive control point
it's hiding that selection this means we can control the strength of the overall filter effect
using the global opacity slider and we can control the strength of the filters effect on individual
control points by changing their opacity let's delete the negative control point we added and
go back to our example of selecting the lichens on the rock if i make the control point large enough
to select the other areas it also selects a lot of the sky but when i reduce its size so that the sky
isn't selected it doesn't select the lichens on the rocks let's duplicate our control point now
by clicking this icon below the control point list you can see a new control points then added next
to the one that was selected we can then click and drag this to a new area of the rock to select that
another way of duplicating a control point is by holding down the option or alt key on
your keyboard and then clicking and dragging the control point by creating multiple small control
points we can select irregular areas although we still have a bit of overspill in the sky but we
can now manage that using negative control points and the opacity sliders of the control points
themselves something else you can do is select all three control points together you can do
this in two ways the first is by holding down your command key or your control key if you're on a pc
and then clicking each control point in the list the selected control points then appear in orange
the other way to quickly select a group of control points is by clicking and dragging over them
with your mouse when you have all three control points selected look what happens if we adjust
the opacity slider of one of them the opacity of the other control points then also changes
the same also happens when i resize one of the control points now this is a temporary grouping
meaning that if i click on another area it deselects a control point but we can also create a
permanent group of control points as before select all the control points you want to group together
then click the group icon to the bottom left of the control point list as you can see the three
control points in the list are replaced by a single group you'll also see that the ungroup
icon now becomes available when i click that we see the three control points again
let's regroup them though because i want to show you a couple of other things about groups notice
that we now have one control point with sliders whilst the other two control points appear as dots
despite this if i move the opacity slider left and right it's still controlling all three control
points now watch what happens when i click one of the dots representing the other control points all
i see is a single slider controlling the size of that individual control point changing this slider
doesn't affect the other control points something else i can do is click and drag individual control
points in the group to reposition them as i hope you've seen in this video control points are
extremely flexible and you should now have a good idea of how to work with them in color efex pro
but to get the most value from control points you need to know how to use the individual filters
that's why i recommend watching this video next in it and demonstrate how to produce impressive
results using only a single filter i hope you've enjoyed today's video and if you haven't done so
already please take a moment to subscribe thanks for watching and i'll see you soon