did you know that there's one filter in the nick collection that i use for almost every image i
edit can you guess what it is hello i'm robin whalley and welcome to lenscraft in this video i'm
going to share possibly the most important filter in the entire knit collection and if you're still
trying to guess what it is let me narrow it down by saying that it's part of nick color effects pro
know what you're thinking let's get back to the starting image that i'm going to use to
demonstrate this filter i've already converted this image from a raw file using dxo photolab
and i have it open in photoshop and if you prefer to use the nik collection in affinity photo
you can do exactly the same thing there my first step is to launch nic color effects
pro as i'm in photoshop i'll click the color effects pro link in the nik selective toolbar
when color effects pro opens i can see my image loaded in the preview and the filter library over
on the left you can filter this library using the buttons at the top but i tend to use it with the
all setting to list all filters i then select my essential filter by clicking it in the list
as i doubt you've guessed it it's the pro contrast filter but there's a little bit more
to it than just adding this single filter once i've added the filter you'll see the controls
over on the right side of the interface the first control at the top is used to correct
any color cast in the image and it's this that first got me started using the filtersome merge
often i correct an image in the raw conversion process but then there'd still be some sort of
faint colour tend this filter made removing it remarkably easy but sometimes you do need an
extra step which is what i'll go over in the demo later when i move the slider to
the right you can see the effect which becomes stronger the further i move it
the next slider is called correct contrast but it would probably be better to call it increased
contrast when i move this to the right you see the image contrast increases do be careful when you're
using this though because it can cause clipping in the brightest and darkest areas of the image
if we look at the histogram at the bottom you can see that it's now clipping the final slider is the
dynamic contrast slider which adds local contrast to the scene i find that it's a great way to open
dark shadows in an image when i move this to the right the effect on the foreground becomes obvious
unfortunately it's also affecting the clouds in this scene giving them a bit too much structure
when used properly though these three sliders can make a huge difference to almost any image
which is what we'll look at next let's start by fixing the slight orange color cast in the image
when i move the slider to the far right you can see that it cleans up the blue in the sky
it also has a nice effect on the yellow grass in the foreground and from the area around the sun
these all appeared to be a little bit too orange to me but the correct color cast sliders removed
all this but unfortunately it's also having an unwanted effect on areas like the rock in
the foreground the way i can prevent this is by adding a control point to select where the
correction is applied i'll start by setting the slider at around 80 to help me see the effect i
can always reduce it later once i've added the control points if it still appears too strong
now i'll add a positive control point by clicking the plus icon and then clicking on the area i
want to select for this image i'll start with the blue sky on the left when i add the control point
it hides the filter effect from the entire image except for the area selected by that control point
now i'll add another control point to the blue area on the other side of the sky after that
i'll add a third positive control point to select the yellow grass on the right side of the frame
then finally a fourth control point to the area of the sun on the left if i expand the control
point list you can see the four control points you can see what each one's selecting by clicking the
tick box to the right of that control point if i click on the icon at the top of the list
we can see the combined mask for all the control points the white area is all what's selected by
the control points and therefore has the colour correction applied but the black mask areas are
protected from this and so they don't change now despite what you might hear these control points
aren't very precise so they also select areas around them to help blend adjustments notice
in this example that the areas in the field and the lichens on the rocks are also being selected
to protect these i can add a negative control point which hides the colour corrections in those
areas i just click the negative control point icon and then click on the field i'll then add another
control point to protect the brown of the heather then finally i'll protect the lichens on the rock
if i click the compare button at the top of the screen you can see the filters remove the orange
tint from most of the scene what we're left with is a much nicer more natural yellow color with the
colour corrected now i want to use the dynamic contrast adjustment to open up the foreground
unfortunately if i try to do that using the current filter it doesn't work because of
the control points i applied the way around this is to add another pro contrast filter
the ability to use the same filter multiple times on an image is often overlooked by a lot of nic
users it means we can select different areas to adjust with a different slider for this filter
let's increase the dynamic contrast slider to 75 percent you can see that it's having
a strong effect on the image but it looks best on the foreground rock and grasses as before
let's start with a positive control point and use it to select the lichens on the rock i'll
also resize the control point so that the effect spreads to the lichens on nearby rocks as well
this works well but it leaves the rock looking a little bit flat on the left side i'll therefore
add a control point to select that area of the rock to apply the dynamic adjustment to
then i'll add a control point to select the grasses and the dark areas in the scene if i use
the compare button you can see the different the adjustments have made to the image just remember
that the compare button hides the effects of both of our filters if i only want to hide the second
pro contrast filter i need to click the tick box to the left of the title to turn it off and on
now i can see how the filter is affecting the clouds which i don't want i'll therefore protect
them by adding negative control points this time rather than trying to enlarge the control point to
select the entire sky let's duplicate it instead i can do this by holding down my option key
and then clicking and dragging the control point if you're using a windows pc that's your alt key
having added negative control points let's check the effect of this filter on the image
this is looking good but let's now try the correct contrast adjustment i'll do this by adding a third
pro contrast filter then if i increase the correct contrast slider to around 30 you can see that it's
having a strong effect across the entire image in this example it's a little too strong so i'll
reduce it to around 10 percent now i'm going to go back to the first pro contrast filter because i
want to check the effect of the correct contrast slider on that remember this was the filter we
used to correct the color cast in certain areas when i increase the correct contrast slider you
can see that it also boosts the colour and the contrast the second filter was used to open up
the shadows in the foreground again increasing the correct contrast slider to 20 gives those areas a
color boost if we now click the compare button you can see the difference these filters have
made to the starting image this is why i consider the pro contrast filter in nicola effect pro to
be absolutely essential when i started using this filter properly as i've demonstrated in this video
it made a big improvement to my work but there are a few other essential techniques
to learn which is why i recommend watching this video next in it i demonstrate four
techniques to make detail pop and enhance the colors in your image using the knit collection
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