Digital BW, The Print

Someone in this group turned me on to Nik Silver Efex Pro and I won't use PS or LR for doing B&W again. I do some preliminary adjustments on the color images first.

As far as noise reduction, I sometimes use Nik Dfine because I was not happy with the NR in Lightroom particularly with my 7D images. It's a change in workflow though because you wind up with a TIF file and I prefer having the sidecar XMP (or multiples) used with virtual copies. But the NR results are much better in Nik and the control point approach lets you easily add more NR in areas with less detail (I'm not a layer mask kind of guy). LR4.x seems a bit better though.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Bill" <bill-lewis@...> wrote:
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> At any rate, what I've been waiting for is a better luminance noise reduction system.   www.PaulRoark.com
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> I will be ordering Lightroom 4 next week and wondered if anyone had used Nik Software Silver Efex Pro and what was thought about it the Academic discount is $99 so an afordable choice for B&W work if it provides an advantage for converting from Color to B&W. I will also purchase CS6 Student discount in May and will be in Photoshop classes in the Fall and Spring 2013.
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> I have read reviews and it seems around half like it and half say it does not do anything that photoshop can do. I have found Actions for converting to B&W but then this software came up on a search. I know it has been mentioned as NIK but not in any detail.
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> Thanks for any thoughts or links to information.
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> Bill Lewis
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