Nik Collection Photoshop Plugins Get Revamp With Powerful New Features
Nik Collection 8 now has a much more logical Photoshop panel instead of the old Nik Palette. DxO
The perennially popular Nik Collection Photoshop plugins from DxO have seen a refresh across all seven of the plugins and now have new integration and powerful features.
Version 8 of the Nik Collection now unlocks the full power of Photoshop masks, while upgrades to the package make the popular Nik Color Efex suite of plugins better than ever. The classic Nik Silver Efex for black and white images has been rethought to ensure striking monochrome images.
The latest Nik Collection of creative Photoshop plugins for photographers now sports a completely redesigned Photoshop panel, powerful new masking functionality and significant improvements to the Silver Efex and Color Efex suites for a more dynamic editing experience.
'With Nik Collection 8, we wanted to enhance both creativity and efficiency,' says Boris Oliviero, Product Director. 'We've reimagined the Photoshop workflow, making it easier than ever to apply powerful effects, refine local adjustments, and move seamlessly between plugins.'
Users of Nik Collection 8 can now import masks directly from Photoshop into any of the Nik plugins, making full use of Photoshop's powerful selection tools. A new feature added to the Local Adjustments panel lets users transfer masks between plugins. When ready, users can send masks created in Nik Collection straight back to Photoshop on a round trip for further editing.
With Nik Collection 8 masks remain accessible at each stage of the workflow, whether they originated in Photoshop or were created using a Nik Collection plugin. There is now a smarter and more flexible round-trip return to Photoshop.
Bringing edits back into Photoshop is now more intuitive and users can choose from converting edits into a Smart Object for non-destructive editing, applying changes to the current layer or by creating a new one. New layers can be generated with a mask for extra flexibility.
The latest version of Nik Collection lets users of Silver Efex view the original color version of ... More the image they are converting to black and white. DxO
Users of Nik Collection can now send their edits directly to Photoshop as a new Photoshop layer while continuing to work inside Nik Collection. This new feature lets users test a multitude of ideas for an image without breaking the creative flow. Once they are back in Photoshop, all their edits will be immediately available.
Nik Collection 8 now has a fully customizable and dockable Photoshop panel, replacing the traditional Nik Palette we are all used to. The new design lets photographers save screen space by choosing which of the plugins they want to display. Any plugin can be launched with a single click creating a more fluid workflow. All the essential controls for managing layers and masks are also immediately accessible. Upgrades To Nik Silver Efex
Possibly one of the most popular of the Nik plugins is Silver Efex, arguably the best black-and-white editing tool on the market. With this new version, Silver Efex gets significant usability and feature boosts. To start with, users can now view their original color image while working on a black-and-white version. This makes it easier to make changes that are dependent on the original image, such as applying Color Filters or adjusting the Sensitivity sliders inside the Film Types filter.
Silver Efex has a streamlined interface that now matches Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex plugins, keeping filters on the left-hand side until they are used to edit an image. Applying presets is now more logical with only the relevant filters appearing on the right-hand side when a preset has been selected.
New Local Adjustments for ClearView and Selective Tones can now be applied in selective areas and each filter also includes some pre-defined options for quick application.
One of the most popular and versatile plugins bundled with Nik Collection 8 is Color Efex Pro. This ... More has now been updated with new color masks and much better handling of TIFF image files. DxO New Color Masks For Nik Color Efex
Targeting local adjustments is now more powerful in Nik Color Efex. Users can select a range of colors for changes to be applied. A click on the desired color brings up handles for tweaking and making fresh adjustments.
Upgrades to Nik Color Efex make it quicker to switch to TIFF format when using the Quick Export button. The export options are now instantly accessible so that users can tweak the Quick Export configuration directly rather than navigating through a menu. Price and Availability:
The new Nik Collection 8 is available now from the DxO website for both macOS and Windows platforms. A new license costs $159,99 / £145.99 / €159,99. Anyone with a license of Nik Collection 6 or 7 can upgrade to the new version for $89.99 £79.99 / €89,99. For those who want to take the latest version for a spin, there is a free 30-day trial available from nikcollection.dxo.com/download .
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