This is the debut of a new column where we talk to pros about their equipment and techniques.
Last week, San Diego–based Nik Software released the fourth version of Color Effex Pro, their popular Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture plugin. Like Photoshop actions, CEP4 allows photographers to quickly combine multiple small adjustments into different treatments or filters. But unlike actions, and even its own previous versions, CEP4 has a stand-alone user interface that makes adding and blending multiple enhancements fast, easy, and intuitive. We spoke with Denver-based adventure sports photographer Lucas Gilman, one of Nik’s beta testers on CEP4, to find out how it integrates into his workflow. Gilman was recently featured on Good Morning America discussing a shoot of Jesse Coombs first descent of Oregon’s 100-foot Abiqua Falls.
Grayson: What does Color Effex offer that regular Photoshop can’t?
Lucas: It allows a photographer who maybe doesn’t know the technical side of Photoshop to make some really nice changes without having to become a Photoshop master. If you know how you want the image to look, it allows you to do that without having to understand layers or masking.
What’s new in this latest version?
It’s a lot faster and incorporates multiple enhancements on an image within one control pane—what they call recipes. In CEP3, if you wanted to use the Brilliance-and-Warmth filter to add a bit of saturation, you’d do that, and if you wanted to add another filter, you’d have to reopen the image in CEP3 and add a second filter. In this version, you can do multiple enhancements. For example, I like the Tonal Contrast filter; it really brings out the detail in things like snow, rocks, and water. Then I’ll add Brilliance-and-Warmth. It creates a nice, pleasing warmth that doesn’t just look like someone popped the saturation up in Photoshop.
So the algorithms here are more complicated than just mixing Photoshop actions?
Under the hood, I don’t know technically how it all works, but from a photographer’s perspective it allows me to enhance color and saturation without it blocking up and losing detail or looking like a blob of color on the screen. You can also save your recipes so you can reproduce them consistently over a body of work.
With software now making it so easy to give photos these looks, what does it mean for photographers who have built their careers on a certain look?
That’s an open question. I mean the iPhone’s Hipstamatic Prints can do a lot of these looks—whether it’s sepia tone or bleach bypass—that people have spent years and years in the dark room perfecting. It means that photographers have to not only be smarter and produce better images constantly, they also have to understand what the visual trends are and how to consistently deliver to clients.
Is this kind of software good for professionals or bad?
The Nik software in particular allows photographers to remain focused photography and not on the back-end work. It allows people to spend their time going out and doing photography and not being a lab tech.
Here are a few examples of photos Gilman has retouched using Nik filters:
I used Viveza (another Nik product that works specifically with color) to build a mask over the reds on the rocks. It allowed me to bring out the detail and contrast in that rock, which was a bit muddy and shaded. Then I added CEP’s Tonal Contrast filter.
I used the Tonal Contrast on that one, again. You choose the range that you’re changing the contrast on. When you change the contrast in Photoshop, it changes globally—in the highlights, midtones, and shadows. With Tonal Contrast, you can select any or all of those three. So I boosted the contrast on the highlights to help the snow pop on the dark sky. And then I went into the midtones to change the contrast selectively [to bring out the lichens on the rocks]. It’s just three different sliders instead of having to mask off those specific areas.
I try to get the white balance right in the camera, but, especially in snow, you’re often left with a bluish cast. I output it as close as I can from the raw format into tif format, but it’s never perfect. Nik has a filter called Remove Color Cast. It’s like auto-white-balance in Photoshop, but this one seems to work. It removes the color cast without changing the exposure. This way, it you’re not losing any data. For snow and watersports, I can’t afford to lose detail in my highlights. But it’s always a battle.
Again I use that tonal contrast filter, which allows me to keep a lot of detail in the rock. That was in a deep dark canyon. Being able to bring out the detail in that rock without changing the contrast globally really helps to make the image work. [This photo was shot] right after a rainstorm and a shaft of light was landing directly on those greens. That’s why they’re almost nuclear. With the Nikon cameras you can also choose custom profiles. I shoot in “vivid,” which is similar to what Fuji Velvia would have been back in the day.
24 Comments
Beautiful work Grayson!
Great idea for a new series. One point though – the “vivid” setting only applies to jpegs – raw files won’t bs effected by any of the in-camera settings.
I use LR3 and I have loaded a dozen or so Camera Profiles which are in addition to the Adobe Camera Raw profile that ship with Lightroom. There is one called Vivid, along with Neutral and others that I routinely use.
“The Nik software in particular allows photographers to remain focused photography and not on the back-end work. It allows people to spend their time going out and doing photography and not being a lab tech.”
Like it or not, the back end work is a huge part of being a photographer these days. Any professional who is scared of learning advanced photoshop is limiting themselves and doing themselves a dis-service. They end up having to rely on software like this, or someone else who does know photoshop to achieve what they are after.
You can call yourself a “purist” and avoid post altogether which is great, but being somewhere in the middle is not good enough.
Would Ansel Adams have focused on getting out there and shooting while some crony was back in the darkroom making his prints?
Photoshop is today’s darkroom.
Jeez… how hard is it to adjust color balance in PS? Actions as well?
Every time technology simplifies or reduces the time it takes to create something, that something is diminished in a supply and demand economy. It doesn’t save time as much as it creates more supply, competition (time), and commonness.
These tools are handy to the beginner/intermediate, or someone still developing their artistic eye, but if you want to really get to know the process (and develop a unique look that nobody else will have) you’ll need to learn the technical side of photoshop.
It’s like taking your camera off auto times 100.
Fortunately with the addition of Lightroom to the post production software family, we’ve moved past that process-demanding workflow and free the photographer to put their energy into the image. Having spent many years working in Photoshop, I’ll never pine for the good old days. Ain’t technology great…
Agree with Kyle/Bob/Craig/Paul above. Plus if the ridiculously over-saturated/silly/false color of that last photo (and to a much less extent the first and second) is the “benefit” of this software, I’ll pass.
This is insulting to the Daily Edit and Jonathan B’s work.
I thought we we weren’t going techie-geek here.
Some great images, seen some of his other work also. I think the translation of “back end” is darkroom time for those who spent as much time in their own darkrooms as out shooting. Post production really hasn’t changed that much in the sense you still look at the negatives or proofs and decide where to go from there.
I look at programs that get the negatives on the computer as film development/lab time. Opening LR, PS or other editing programs is the time spent in the darkroom to develop proofs and full prints. JMHO.
I like the new columns being added to APE – the daily edit is a treat. But this one seems to be a false start – or at least with this post.
As previous commenters already pointed out being well versed in PS is part of the craftsmanship of being a photographer in the digital age. Relying on automated quick-fixes is great to get someone started, but not really a great way to talk about how ‘the pros’ do it.
Of course, there will always be a well published pro that relies on the equivalent of p-mode. But for the most part, as pro you either learn PS, or you hire someone to do your post work. And yes, some tools can enhance workflow efficiency and are in proper order, but then lets talk about efficiency and not fear of learning PS.
Yikes,
I need to restate my comment: I am thankful that I do not have to rely on PS for my post production needs. Count me as one who thinks Adobe created Lightroom to make amends for the digital hell it brought upon us with Photoshop (Please, this is a lighthearted comment).
I see that Lucas will be in Atlanta tomorrow doing a program on working in the field. His work is great and from his credentials, he certainly stands on solid ground with his assessment of CFP4.
Photoshop post-production is NOT the same as darkroom work.
The reason is derived from the fact that film photography was a mechanical medium with a clearly defined sequence that began with the user and ended with a photograph. Digital imaging is an electrical medium that is simultaneous which means the user is not the starting point and a photograph is not the end point.
Digital imaging is working towards integration with all digital mediums to achieve true simultaneity. This means that there will be no pre-process (user) or post-process (darkroom work). All digital imaging will be simultaneous once integrated and there will be no beginning and no end point.
Post-production is a misleading term because it implies a sequence. But digital is working to demolish sequences. Eventually, there will only be digital production and no such thing as “pre” or “post” production.
There will be no beginning and end point? Are you saying that at some point my image will be finished before I even take it?
Post production is not the same as darkroom work, you are right, but it does occur after the photo is taken Hence the phrase “post”. It is the closest thing that resembles what used to take place in the darkroom. Now, funny enough it takes place in Lightroom, and Photoshop.
I’m not sure what you are trying to say about sequence being gone. It doesnt make any sense. There is still a clear sequence of events required to product a great image. Perhaps if photographers continue to give up control to automated plugins with lots of sliders, there will be no sequence. You will just take a photo and out comes the perfect shot based on what an algorithm thinks it should look like.
“There will be no beginning and end point? Are you saying that at some point my image will be finished before I even take it?”
Digital is an electrical medium which means that all processes continually work towards simultaneity. A digital image will not be finished before the user takes it because it will never be finished. Digital is never finished and can always be manipulated at any time. It is also working towards eliminating the user from the beginning of the process. We can already see this happening through the movement towards “reinterpretation” The Bresson of the digital age might just be a computer program that analyzes content collected from surveillance camera footage by organizing it according to patterns derived from golden ratios etc. There is no need for a user to be the start of a digital imaging process or a finished image to ever be the end of the process. This is what is meant by simultaneity.
Ha, funny.
“There is no need for a user to be the start of a digital imaging process”
Technically speaking, or in terms of pure process, that is correct. But if you want to create ‘meaningful’ images (on an emotional or intellectual, human-interactive level), you do need a human being at the start. For only a human being knows what it means to be human (and how to express that).
Meaningfulness in that sense has nothing to do with golden ratios or other aspects related to the purely visual structure of an image (which can be handled by automated algorithms). It has to do with being a living, breathing, conscious human being. It is about taking part in the general field of human consciousness, and making a contribution in that field which can be responded to by other human beings. Above all it requires ‘participation’, it requires knowing (on a practical, visceral level) what is ‘is’ and ‘means’ to ‘be’ a human being. Hence by definition you cannot exclude human beings from art intended to be meaningful to human beings.
Unless of course the aim is art created by computers which will be appreciated by other computers, but that is a totally different endeavour.
But to get back to the topic of the post.
Nik and other plugins can surely have there place as tools in a photographer’s toolbox. Yes, in a sense they are ‘black boxes’ the user has only limited control over, and if you choose to use effect X you will allways get the same look the effect is programmed to produce.
But in the old days, weren’t Velvia or Kodachrome ‘black boxes’ as well (or different developers, paper stocks, toners, or other tools of the darkroom)? They each gave there own, consistent, signature look. The photographer could choose to use them when their look was useful for the message that needed to be conveyed by the image.
But I don’t recall that stopping anyone from making art or meaningful images.
Darkroom, Lightroom, Photoshop, plugins, they’re all tools that can be used to achieve photographic expression. The more tools, the richer our toolbox, and the more efficiently we can achieve the result we’re after. Sounds good to me :-)
Ugh
I second that.
Yawn
I’ll be in my darkroom, printing 20×24, listening to the new Mastodon album, and sniffing Selenium toner.
That (DT’s assessment) is what I meant to say………
This proves again: there’s no shortcut to good post production.
For good color you need to master Photoshop – or pay someone who has mastered it.
I’m not even looking at images with pointless post production effects any more.
Great idea for a new column, talking to pros and their equipment and techniques.
The article from Sept. 22 about Feinberg’s tailor-made 8×10″ digital capture back – what a story!
Gilman obviously has big chops as a photographer and must have some great techniques within the whole craft of outdoor/adventure photography. But as most any photo assistant or student can tell you, colour treatment plugins are old hat once you understand Curves.
I am disappointed with this article because I cannot understand why it would be published, other than as a product testimonial.
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