Software News

DxO just released their third major upgrade to the popular Nik plug-ins for Photoshop. Here’s what’s new in Nik Collection 3.

Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 is a major upgrade to an already great product and introduces many new features that offer you even more control over an image’s detail, contrast, and tonality, making it easy to transform color files into stunning black-and-white photographs. Silver Efex Pro 2 now includes controls for Dynamic Brightness, Amplify Blacks, Amplify Whites, Soft Contrast, Fine Structure, Image Borders, Selective Colorization, as well as a History Browser and many speed and quality improvements. All of Silver Efex Pro 2’s new features also play nice with Nik’s U Point technology, giving you selective control over an image instead of globally applying an effect, although that option is available, too.

Whether you work in Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, or Aperture, V2 enables you to quickly select the areas you want to change by pointing, clicking, and dragging without the need to create time-consuming selections and masks.

Under development for the past few years, ON1 Photo RAW is the first Raw processing software and non-destructive photo editor to be unveiled in over a decade. With support for over 800 cameras and sophisticated editing capabilities, the software utilizes cutting-edge code to make the most of today’s hi-res cameras and high-performance computers.

Judging by the popularity of facial retouching software, there seem to be a lot of people out there who want to make their subjects look like they just arrived off a private jet from Monte Carlo. And they want to do it fast, and not get bogged down with little technicalities like learning how to use Photoshop. So, is it possible to just press a button and instantly have a complexion that looks like J.Lo after an hour in the makeup chair? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out, so let’s take a look.

First, let’s take a look at what we have. Perfect Portrait is one of six products that combined give you onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 6. You can buy the whole bundle or you can buy just the individual products that you like. And while I’m not going to address the other products here, let me just add kudos to onOne for using the same interface for each product, something you’d think would be automatic with software suites but sadly is not.

Whether you’re starting with a portrait, a landscape, a wedding photo, or a still life, it’s easy to use the hundreds of effects in onOne Software’s new PhotoFrame 4.5 (PF 4.5) to enliven your images and give them a distinctive look and unique appeal.

While some, like me, like to spend hours working on an image in their digital darkroom, quite a few photographers express a desire to process photographs into good-quality digital files with as little effort as possible without having to learn a new technique or software. For those who don’t find it fun and the rewards too hard to come by, a company in Europe called Elpical may have an answer.