Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of 'Exploring Photography' right here on
AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama. It's
the camera store that has everything for
photographers like you and me. Well a few
episodes ago I created a Gavin Hoey
inspired photo shoot and in the
post-production phase i used the Nik
software collection and just sort of
glazed over how I did that and then I
also used the Nik software collection in
two episodes following that in front bokeh and silver screen magic and since
those episodes went live people have
been sending me tons of emails and
questions and comments on facebook
saying hey how do you get the software,
the nik software collection, how much
does it cost and how do you use it? Well
the good news is it's absolutely free to
get the Nik software collection. Its
software that adds functionality to
Lightroom and Photoshop. To get that
stuff you just zip over to google.com/nikcollection.
Google owns the software
and they're giving it away for free so
just zip over to google.com/nikcollection.
and when you get there you'll
see that all of the software
packages there have analog effects, color
effects, silver effects, HDR effects etc. All of
them are there to get those. Just click
on the download button, choose mac or
windows and then once you download that
file, double click it. It will launch the
installer and set everything up for you
on your computer. Iit's extremely easy. Now
once you have everything set up to use
this stuff in Lightroom it's really easy
either in the library module or in the
develop module you just click on the
picture or the thumbnail and then you
click edit in and you'll see that all of
the Nik software shows up so analog
effects, color effects etc. It just shows
up here so if you click on, let's say,
analog effects pro it's going to launch
that software and then you can start
playing with it and doing things with
the software. Now the question is how do
you get started? Well I've got five tips
to help you get started with a Nik
software collection. The first one is
just start playing, just start playing
with the software. Right click launch
analog effects or silver effects and
just start
playing with all the sliders and all the
different things and you'll see it's
very intuitive but if it's not
incredibly intuitive to you, you can just
zip over to the Google Nik collection
site and you'll see that they have a
Help Center. If you click on the help
center you'll see that there's a getting
started section and there's a section on
every single application and so you can
walk through each of the tools and the
tool combinations and the keyboard
shortcuts. They've got videos, all kinds
of stuff so the first tip I have for you
is to play and then watch these
tutorials because it will give you a
really deep dive into what the Nik
software collection can do. The next
thing I want to show you is something
that's not so obvious, some things that
aren't so obvious in those tutorials.
The first one is the software itself if
you use it, as is it can be destructive.
In other words you can set up all of
your different filters and different
things or cameras or whatever but as
soon as you hit save, all your changes
are committed. They go to Lightroom and
Photoshop and that's it. You can't go
back and tweak anything. That's no good.
You want to be able to tweak different
things so let me show you how to do that.
It's very, very simple and you do that by
creating custom recipes okay so to
create custom recipes, all you need
to do is start with something, like, we'll
go through these different cameras. So
again I'm an analog effects pro. The way
this works is you have different cameras,
black and white settings, color cast, wet
plates, whatever. Play with these and
you'll see exactly how they work so we're
going to start with these classic
cameras and when you click on a classic
camera what it's going to do is it's
going to do some magic. It's going to
create some things with basic
adjustments, I'm going to add some dirt and
scratches, maybe a lens vignette
different film types etc so you're going to
have all these things on the right over
here that you can play with or add or
subtract by clicking these buttons. What
you might want to do later is to click
this little right arrow and you might be
tempted to add some of these tools here,
like motion blur or light leak or
whatever. So the problem is if you just
click that for example, we'll click motion
blur, notice all of my changes that I had
over here on the right, they just went
away so I don't want to just use the
tool. What I want to do is use a camera
kit, so again I'll go back to classic
camera. I'll choose this one and if I
want to add something to that instead of
just clicking over here on the tool,
click camera kit first. That's not so
obvious. Once you click that now you have
all your tools on the right and if I
want to add something to that like
motion blur. Now we've got a little plus
sign, I can click that and it adds to
what I already have over here, then I can
start playing with this and adding and
subtracting. Now when you have a look
that's really interesting maybe you want
to apply that to several images. What you
can do is you can go down here to this
custom palette right here. There's a
little plus next to that. When you click
that it's going to take whatever you've set
up, so everything that you have over here,
your basic adjustments, your lens blur.
Whatever you've added is going to save that
as a custom recipe. Now I've created
several recipes. One of them here is
called Emily Screen because in the
silver screen magic episode I wanted to
apply the same settings to all of those
images so if I click on that you'll see
that as soon as this applies all of
those settings, I have something that
looks pretty darn good. Now one of the
things that I want to change, though, is
where the bokeh is on this and so I
might want to change the different size
or whatever and so by creating a custom
recipe I can always go in and load that
recipe, make my changes and then commit
the changes and so I'm going to click
Save and as soon as I do that it's going
to save a new image and it's going to throw
that into Lightroom so I can look at it
and that's a nice thing. When you
right-click in Lightroom it's going to
create a copy so you can play all you
want. You're not going to hurt your
original image. The nice thing about
using those custom recipes is that you
can use them over and over with
different images. So for example, here's
an image of Gavin Hoey and here's the
recipe I used to create all of that
texture. Well what if I wanted to use
that on a similar image? So here I am,
same background, a similar thing. So how
would I use that? Well I can right-click,
say 'edit in' analog effects pro
too and it is going to say what do you
want to do? A TIFF file. Choose the
default, unless you know exactly what
you're doing. Say edit. That's going to
open that and as soon as it's opened, now
I can go in here to my custom recipes
and I have one that's called Gav Max so
Mad Max but Gavin, Gav Max. Click on that
and it's going to apply everything that
I use for my Gavin Hoey set up to me and
it looks ok but there's a problem with
that. I really want to get rid of some of
this texture that's on my face. Well I
could use some control points and some
things that you could learn about in
most tutorials, or there's one thing that
I can do that's a little bit better than
just right clicking in Lightroom and
this is I think the key to really having
successful post-production with Nik
software. So I'm going to hit cancel and
I'm not going to apply those changes. Instead of just going straight into
the analog effects pro I'm going to click edit
in and I'm going to go into Photoshop.
I'm going to say edit a copy with
Lightroom adjustments. Now this is going
to give me a lot more flexibility. In the
future it's going to give me a lot more
flexibility with layer masks and all
kinds of things, so this is going to open
Photoshop. And Photoshop, once I've
installed my Nik software, it's going to
do some really cool things. So here I
have Photoshop. If you've just installed
the Nik software tools, what you're going
to see here is this little dialog that
pops up and floats around this window. It
can be sort of annoying if you want to
turn that off you can either close it or
you can go down here to the settings and
then you can say automatically open, do
not automatically open. That's what I
have mine set to, do not automatically
open, because I don't want to see this
popping up every time I open Photoshop
but how do you get to those Nik software
tools. Well it's nice. It's very simple. So
I have my background layer here. I'm going to hit
command or ctrl J to duplicate that. Go
to filter and then in the filters I have
my Nik collection. Now I'm going to zip
over here to Analog Effects Pro. Again
you can use any of the Nik software
applications or
using this one to keep things simple in
this episode. Once you have that again
I'm going to go and apply my Gav Max
filter, my preset that I already created.
It's going to add that then I'm going to
click OK. Now the difference between this
and Lightroom is now I have a layer and
that layer is going to allow me to add
layer masks, change opacities and do all
kinds of different things. So here it's
kind of come in and once it's finished
what I can do is I can add a layer mask
and if I want to get rid of some of this
this texture that's on my face, I can
just go in here to my layer mask, get a
brush. I can start brushing some of this
off and so that is how that will work.
Now the other thing I can do, you can see
that not only did it change the texture
but it also changed some of the
luminosity and the color, so I could go
in and create another layer with all the
changes but take away the texture and so
then I would preserve the skin tone but
then I would have the texture on a
different layer and I could actually go
in and just do a bunch of different
presets in the Nik collection. I could
do some black-and-white adjustments, I
could do some color adjustments I could
do some analog effects adjustments and
put each of those on a different layer
and then inside of Photoshop I have the
ability to go in and tweak each one of
those layers accordingly using opacity
or layer masks, or whatever filters I want
to use. Now it's also one of the nice
things about using the saved recipes if
you're using photoshop. So, for example, we
want to bring back in the skin tone, I'm
going to go back into that layer that I
created, go in here to filter and then
again, go to Nik collection, go to analog
effects pro that's going to load in. Now
that since I saved that preset, I saved
that recipe, I can click on Gav Max and
because it's a saved recipe I have
everything there and I can go in and
make changes to it, so in this one I
don't want the dirt and scratches, I'm
going to take that off because I just
want my skin tone to be preserved
without the dust and scratches. I'll hit
OK and now I have a lot
more power in Photoshop because I have
the dirt and scratches and everything on
one layer and then everything that's
exactly the same without the dirt and
scratches on a different layer and I can
start using those layer masks so
remember we masked out the dirt and
scratches but it messed up my skin tones
but now I have the skin tones as they
were with everything else right
underneath. Watch this. As soon as it
comes in... boom now my skin tones are
corrected and I'm only adjusting my
texture and so that's the cool thing. Now
on these different layers I can go in,
let's say just want to get rid of some
of this texture here on my cheek, I
can do that and get rid of this guy right
here. I sort of like that. I can paint
that back in and I have the ability to
add or subtract those textures and film
effects or whatever. I can put
those on different layers and play with
them in Photoshop instead of in the Nik
software solution and so that gives me a
lot more control in my images and I love
using that. So my suggestion is to use
Photoshop and layers and use those
filters so you can separate everything
for total control if your controlling it
like I am. Well, thank you so much for
joining me for this episode of 'Exploring Photography'. Don't forget to subscribe to
AdoramaTV, that way you don't miss any of
those groovy episodes I was talking
about and you don't miss anything by
other contributors like Gavin Hoey
and Tamara Lackey and Bryan Peterson
and the entire team here on AdoramaTV.
Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you
again next time.