Product—Color Efex Pro!™ from nik multimedia, Inc

There are many types of plugins available: for web browsers, audio players, video tools and all kinds of applications. In the early 90s, Adobe introduced Photoshop[R] plugins or more generally expressed, Photoshop-compatible plugins. Since their introduction thousands of them have been developed by a few hundred people and companies all over the world. More than 50 image and video applications presently support Photoshop plugins. Some of the most commonly used applications that support the Photoshop plugins, in addition to Photoshop, are Jasc Paint Shop[TM] Pro[R] Ulead PhotoImpact[R], Corel Photo-Paint[R], Macromedia Fireworks[R] and Adobe Photoshop Elements[R].

Photoshop-compatible plugins are used to supply additional image effects or to perform special tasks that are impossible or difficult to achieve within the image application alone. They integrate into the host application and are executed from within the application.

Popular among professionals and amateur graphic artists and photographers are filters created by nik multimedia, Inc., a privately held company founded in 1995.

Photographers who use Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro, Ulead Photo Impact or Corel Photo-Paint to edit and enhance photographic images, will want to try one of nik's popular sets of filters: Color Efex Pro!. The individual filters are packaged in various sets. The Photo Design Set provides, among other filters, a polarization filter and a filter to convert a color image to black and white. There is a Photo Abstract Set that allows the user to apply artistic enhancements to an image. Included is a filter that emulates Solarization, a popular darkroom technique. The Photo Classic set includes a Sunshine filter (I'll talk about this later), a Skylight filter and some graduated filters. Finally the Photo Artistic Set includes Sepia, bicolor and Midnight filters for controlling light and enhancing color.

There are a total of 55 different filters in the sets and they are also available in the Complete Collection Set. Included are tutorial files that instruct you how to use each filter interface. The controls are straight-forward and easy to understand and allow you to truly make the filter effect your own and not a "preset" created by someone else. This review would be much too long if I tried to include information on each of the 55 filters, so this covers those that I tried first.

Figure 1 shows a before-and-after example of the Sunshine filter to improve a photo that turns a photo shot on an overcast day into one that looks like it was taken on a sunny day.

[FIGURE 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Figure 2 shows an example of the Monday Morning Sepia which creates an artistic image from a commonplace photograph.

[FIGURE 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the Abstract Set are filters that are a lot of fun to use and allow yon to unleash your artistic talents. It will be very useful to those interested in the Creative sections of virtual salons or study groups.

Figure 3 is an example of the Saturation to Brightness filter used on a photograph of the Grand Haven Lighthouse in Michigan.

[FIGURE 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

These are just a few examples of the 55 different filters available in Color Efex Pro!. You can download demos of these and all of the others at the nik multimedia website: http://www.nikmultimedia.com/usa/ maincontent/index.shtml

The filters may also be purchased from the nik site. Prices on the individual sets vary from $69.95 to $109.95 with the complete collection priced at $299.95. This sounds a bit expensive, but when you consider there are 55 filters in the collection. the price turns out to be only $5.45 for each filter. I heartily recommend these filters.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group