Google announced recently that Google Nik Collection is available for free. Pundits speculate this almost certainly means there will be no further development of these popular popular photo editing plug-ins for Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, etc. Who knows? I downloaded and installed the software anyway.
The following semi-photorealistic composite image is the output of a quick-and-dirty test of “HDR Efex Pro 2,” one of eight plug-ins in the collection. I opened a set of three bracketed exposures (+/- two stops of exposure) in Adobe Lightroom CC 2015. Then I used the Nik plug-in to stack and tone map the image; I saved the output and cropped it slightly using Lightroom.
23 MAR 2016 | Meadowood Recreation Area | Hidden Pond
The result is fairly good for my first foray into using one the plug-ins featured in the Google Nik Collection. There’s a little strangeness in the rendering of some of the clouds that are visible among the trees, near the upper-center of the image. I’m guessing there’s a way to fix that problem using “control points,” where the real magical power of Nik happens. There’s always more to learn, time permitting.
Copyright © 2016 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.
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