Color Efex Pro 4 is the newest version of Nik's digital photographic filters for creating, retouching, and creative enhancement of images within Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Apple Aperture. Color Efex Pro 4 contains a large set of enhancements filters for color correction, retouching, enhancements, and to extend creativity to your photographs.
Color Efex Pro 4 also contains Nik's premier U Point technology that gives you pinpoint control over what you want to do to your image and where exactly you want to do it. No longer are you limited to working with global changes and masking to accomplish your goals. Rather, now you can precisely control specific areas of your image with a couple of clicks of your mouse.
Basically, the Color Efex Pro workflow works like this. From inside your photo editing software, say Photoshop, open an image, and open Color Efex Pro from the filter menu which will open the Color Efex interface. The Filterlist with a listing of filters is on the left hand side of the interface; on the right side are the enhancement controls; and in the middle is your image.
When you click on one of the filters your image will take on that look. Click on another to change it to a different look. Once you find a filter from the left that most closely represents what you want to accomplish, you can select it and either just use it or use it as a starting point.
If you use it as a starting point you can then use the enhancement control options on the right to make global adjustments to the image. This really gives you a lot of control over how you produce your image. These include controls to adjust the highlights, midtones, shadows, saturation, and contrast type.
Next, to take ultimate control, you can use the U Point Control Points to selectively control where each adjustment is applied to the images. This allows you to control the effect without having to use selections and/or masking. By placing Control Points on an image, you can control your adjustments to fine tune certain areas of your images independent of the rest of the photo.
So what is new with Color Efex Pro 4?
• Filter Combinations – now give you the ability to stack filters into new combinations so you can get just the look that you want. All you have to do is choose a filter, make whatever adjustments you want and then add another filter right over the top, and another, and another, until the look works for you.
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