hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i'm celebrating launch of my new book mastering nik
colour efex pro 4. and i thought what better way to celebrate than by completing a demo edit
i'll be showing you how to turn this photo into this
to make my changes i'll be using color effects pro from the nik collection 3 by dxo
but don't worry if you only have an earlier version as they look and work the same way
the original image was shot in raw format using a canon 5d mark ii camera to prepare the raw file
for editing i've pre-processed it into a dng file using dxo pure raw if you're not familiar with
puro watch my video demonstration i'll include a link to it in the youtube video description
my first job with the dng file is to correct the slide under exposure which i'll do in adobe
camera raw there i'm going to start by changing the profile the reason for this is that i don't
like the default adobe color profile i find it can leave some images looking a little
bit false after processing in nik instead i'm going to use the adobe neutral profile which
creates a much less colorful starting position i'll then increase the exposure by around 50
followed by a reduction in the contrast by -20 this creates a nice misty scene
which is a good starting point for editing with nik color efex pro
now i won't do anything else further in camera raw including sharpening and noise reduction dxo purer
took care of these for me as well as applying optical lens corrections with the image open
for editing in photoshop i'll be applying color effects pro as a plugin to preserve my editing
changes for the future i want to use photoshop smart objects i can create this by duplicating
my background layer and then converting it for smart filters in the filters menu
with the layer converted i can apply nikola effects pro to it as a smart filter
once color efex loads the image then i can begin to add my filters for editing
the first one is the pro contrast filter which i use for a technique i call colour cleaning
the filter has an extremely useful correct colour cast slider which i can use to neutralize
the yellow colour in this scene this makes it easier to selectively reintroduce colour later
i'll apply the effect globally at around 40 which gives the image a natural feel the next thing is
to balance the exposure across the scene by lightening the ground a little i'll do this
by adding a graduated neutral density filter from the filter library when i shot this image i used
a two-stop graduated neutral density filter on my lens the filter wasn't quite strong enough
but the three-stop i had with me was too strong what this color efex filter gives me is the
ability to precisely correct my exposure balance which i couldn't achieve with my lens filters
i'll set the upper tonality to around -15 which darkens the sky very slightly then i'll set the
lower tonality to around 10 percent to lighten the ground the blend slider controls the transition
between these two areas and the default of 25 seems fine for this image but i am going to check
the vertical shift slider to see if the transition area needs adjusting when i move the slider left
and right it moves the transition between the upper and lower adjustments up and down
when i do this it becomes easier to see the position of the adjustment the next adjustment
i want to make is to better define the castle and hillside i'm going to do this by adding a
second pro contrast filter to apply contrast and dynamic contrast adjustments the contrast
slider is the traditional contrast adjustment that makes darker tones darker and light tones lighter
the dynamic contrast adjustment is a little bit different and tends to protect the darkest and
lightest tones whilst adding contrast but what i don't want is for the adjustment to apply to
the entire image so i'm going to use control points to add it to the castle and the hill
i'll then use a few negative control points to protect the surrounding areas
from unwanted adjustments control points aren't very precise and will blend the
filter adjustments into surrounding areas often where you don't want it
also if the effect looks too strong on either the castle or the hillside
i can control it by adjusting the opacity of those control points
when i click the compare button you can see the difference with the starting image
the next point to address is the mist around the castle and hill
i want the mist to be stronger particularly on the left of the castle there are a couple of fog
filters i could use for this in colour effects pro but i'll try the graduated fog filter first
this adds a fog effect to the sky but i can rotate it to cover the ground using the rotation slider
set to zero degrees next i'll use negative control points to punch holes through the fog
to show more of the hill and castle i'm also going to check the different fog methods in the filter
to see which one suits this image best personally i like method 3 with this scene
i can then reduce the opacity a little as it's quite strong
after that i can tweak the opacity slider on the negative control points
by default the opacity is set to zero on negative control points which is what removes the filter
effect when i increase the opacity slightly you see the fog begin to appear it only takes
a small increase in the opacity to improve the result probably my final plan step is
to selectively introduce warmth to the scene in the clouds and on the foreground hillside i'll
do this using the brilliance and warmth filter setting the want slider to around 40 percent
i can then use control points to restrict this to the clouds in the sky
i'm then going to add a second brilliance and want filter and use that to warm the light on the
hillside using two separate filters in this way gives me more flexibility to control the effect
i can then fine tune the filters separately using the warmth and saturation sliders
i like the result at this point but i feel the top of the frame is a little bit too dark given
the light mist in the bottom half to fix this i'll add another graduated neutral density filter
after adding the filter i'll set up the upper tonality to around 40 to lighten the sky i can
then use the vertical shift and blend sliders to control the area of the sky that's lightened
i also want the effect of the filter to be stronger on the left than on the right
so i'll use a couple of control points to refine the effect
at this point i'm satisfied with the overall effect but i think the image is a little bit light
to address that i'll use a levels and curves adjustment
i'm going to start by adding an anchor point to prevent the shadows from darkening too much
i can then darken the midtones which also boosts the colour strength a little
that now looks to be finished so i can click the ok button
to apply my changes and return to photoshop
back in photoshop if i turn off the layer we can compare the nic changes with the starting image
what i wanted to do in this video was demonstrate some of the editing potential in
nik color efex pro if you want to know more i'm going to shamelessly promote my new book
mastering nik colour efex pro 4. i'll include a link to it in the youtube video information
i hope you've enjoyed the demonstration and that i'll see you soon for another
video