Color Efex 3.0 Makes Pictures Cool--or Warm

Earlier today, I met with folks from Nik Software, maker of digital-photograph-enhancing software. Last week Nik launched Version 3.0 of Color Efex Pro, which works some pretty powerful magic using over 250 effects from 52 filter types--some with evocative names such as Bleach Bypass, Glamour Glow, and Indian Summer. The last can take a forest image of green-leaved trees and convincingly turn it into a autumn scene.

A key of Nik's software is the Control Point, part of the company's U Point technology, which Nikon has licensed for its Capture NX software. You can use the Control Point (see image) to apply a filter to only parts of an image based on pixel similarity, rather than just using Photoshop's frustrating Magic Wand tool. The Control Point lets you do things like vignetting with a center other than the actual center of the image.





Though it's installed as a Photoshop plugin, Color Efex's own slick interface takes over when you choose its menu option in Photoshop, and processing is done outside of Photoshop. It can also run under Photoshop Elements, and Nik did not deny that it already had the technology in place to put out a standalone editor at some point. But the company's senior manager of product education and planning, Tony Corbell, told me that it makes more sense for the product to live inside Photoshop, as that's "the big dog" that "owns the market."

Filters come in four main categories: Traditional, Stylize, Retouch, and Color Correction. The Traditional filters replicate glass filters of yore, but with more control over the amount of filtration. Stylize filters include filters like Glamour Glow and Midnight. Retouch filters are of great interest to wedding photographers, who want to do stuff like soften the bride's skin. There's also a very powerful black-and-white converter, which can give color digital images a tonal richness that's truly impressive. You can use a split view to see the original and enhanced image side by side, and its histogram tools are quite powerful.

To get you up to speed with the multitude of filter options, Nik has tutorial videos online for all of them, and you can try the product as a free download for 30 days. If you decide your pictures can't live without it, Color Efex Pro will set you back $299.95 for the full set; a Select Edition of 35 filters can be had for $159.95, while the core set of 15 filters is available as the $99.95 Standard Edition.