Best Street & Astrophotography Lens

stf1x wrote:

Thanks for the details about ACR. Very interesting. Just to complete the picture now with the NIK tools:

What at sliders or presets do you use in NIK Silver FX that give you the final look of these 2 pictures ?

I don't honestly remember for those two shots - my workflow is constantly evolving. I get bored with repetition and so keep experimenting. I used to think b&w meant Silver FX and job done. Now I also run b&w images through Color effex Pro and play some more. I will often use a filter but then scale back its effect with an opacity slider. Sometimes I will use only one filter and using layers I will brush in the filter effect rather than have it apply to the whole image.

These filters can have a dramatic effect on how it looks and over time I've come to the conclusion it is better to pull back a little and be more subtle. The adage that you can have too much of a good thing springs to mind and like HDR processing it is better to not get carried away and try and keep it real.

Color FX Pro has many filters that I've never found useful - but I still keep trying them out! The sunlight filter was a filter I rarely used but lately I find I'm using it instead of using glamour glow. It's useful for gently clawing back some effects I feel are overdone and at the same time introducing new effects upon the image.

I've no doubt that it is probably better to take pause with your image before you plunge into post processing and start playing. If you can think of where you should be going with it beforehand then you are more likely to take the right path through your filters to get there. If you just play with them each time then you are sometimes doubling up filters that actively cancel each other out and you've achieved little. The pros at PP probably work this way and get what they want much quicker than I do.

Sorry I know that's not very helpful. I did used to have at hand lots of extra presets for Nik Silver FX but lost them when I upgraded to Windows 10. I could get them back but kinda think too much choice just makes it harder. Better to stick to a few and get to know them inside out and tweak them too your liking and make your own presets eventually. Don't dismiss some presets on first look either.