Mastering the Nik Collection - 2: Color Efex Pro 4 - Control Points

hey guys this is Anthony Morgan T from online photography training.com welcome to my video series mastering the Nik collection several years ago the Nik collection of plugins was the number one set of plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom cashing in on their success they sold off to Google Google marketed the suite for a couple years with a few updates then they announced that they would not be updating the software any longer and they made it free to download around that time I did a set of training videos on the software that proved to be very popular recently the company DxO purchased the rights to the Nik collection and announced that they would be developing and updating it although it's no longer free it is nice to have a caretaker for this software because it is very good with all the good things happening with Nik I decided to update my training videos on the product this new series will be more in-depth and thorough than the previous series please be aware that I have no affiliation with the company I'm not being paid by them to do these videos and if you purchase the software I will not be making a commission on the sale with that said if you could do me a favor if you like these videos please click the thumbs up button and share them finally if you can make a donation I would greatly appreciate it that info is in the description below this video along with a link to my code of ethics statement let's get started in this video we're gonna continue our discussion of color effects Pro 4 by Nik software specifically we're going to talk about control points also as you could see we're in Lightroom so I'm going to show you how to use any of the Nik plugins as a Lightroom plugin now this specific image is an icon raw file and I really didn't do a lot to it I did some basic panel processing I added some contrast with the tone curve I added some sharpening and I did lens Corrections so I'm ready to send it over into color effects Pro for now and there's a number of different on ways you could do that in lightroom I'm just going to show you the way I usually do it I simply right-click on the image and I go down to edit in and then down to color effects Pro 4 and when you do that this dialog box pops up now because this is a raw file we only have one option at the top and that's to edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments that's because none of the NIC plugins will work on a raw file directly so you're going to have to make an image file out of that raw file if you are working with an image file a JPEG or TIFF you have then the option of either editing a copy of that file or editing the original file I strongly suggest that you always edit a copy that way if you do some stuff in one of the NIC plugins or any plugin for that matter and then a week later you're looking at it and you really don't like what you did you'll have the original file to fall back on now once you're done with the top part you have some copy file options and by default it's going to want to use a tiff file so it's going to take this raw file and create a tiff file and that's usually what I leave it at you have the option also of doing a PSD file which is a Photoshop file or a JPEG and I found TIFF works fine so that's what I leave it on color space the color space is kind of how many colors are available in the program or the gamut of colors available and srgb by default is what it's going to want to use and it's the smallest color space our Doby RGB is a bit bigger and prophoto RGB is the largest usually I just use prophoto RGB now display p3 will be specific to your computer you might not have that show at all you might have only the three so that's why I'm only discussing those three so I'm gonna go with prophoto RGB because that's what I prefer to use it gives you all colors available to the plug-in bit depth I leave that at the default 16 bits per component it's going to make a larger file but it will have more depth to it and obviously bit depth a resolution I would never go lower than 240 and that's what it will have by default this is actually the pixels per inch and you know it really has to do with monitor displays and it's probably beyond the scope of this video I have talked about PPI and dpi in several other videos I will say that typically I change this to 360 that's because I use Epson printers usually and Epson suggests that you keep the resolution at 360 for their printers if you're not using an Epson printer usually everyone else will switch that resolution to 300 so 240 at a minimum that's the default 300 for most cases if you're using an Epson printer put it at 360 and I won't use any compression at all and I'll just then click Edit and then what will happen is Lightroom will create this TIFF file and you can see that there's a progress bar in the top left hand corner as it's creating the TIFF file from this raw file and once it creates it it will now open up color effects Pro for automatically and what you're gonna find is whatever you did in color effects Pro for previously will get applied to your image it's kind of a they call it sticky controls so you could see that it automatically created a black and white image I'm gonna maximize this so we could take up the entire screen and that's because it added this black and white conversion filter automatically I must have done that the last time I had color effects Pro for a color effects Pro for open so a lot of people hate these kind of sticky controls but a lot of people love them if you're a wedding photographer and you have a lot of similar shots and you're using color effects Pro for to put an effect on those shots you would you can't really do them in bulk there's no bulk option for any of the Knik plugins but you could send one over do all the adjustments to that send each of the other ones over and all those filters will appear automatically over here so it saves a lot of time now for this image I don't want it to be black and white so I'm just going to delete that filter now I mentioned that we're going to talk about control points so I'm going to just use a couple different filters over here the first one I'm going to add is detail extractor so I'm going to click on that and you can see that it added quite a bit of detail to the entire image and I'm going to click on this little compare button in the top of the screen above the image and hold that in you can see there's before and there's after there's before and there's after and it's okay but let's say for the sake of this demonstration that I want to really just apply detail extractor to the sky but not anywhere else those of you that use a lot of other plugins like on one or lumen are familiar with masking they have masks Nick doesn't have masks but they have control points and control points do pretty much the same thing and they're a little tricky maybe to get too used to at first but once you're used to using control points you'll find that you could do this very easily and I could have it so it just affects the sky and nothing else in the image so to add a control point now we added the filter to add the control point right below the filter you'll see that there is a control point like line here and you can see plus and minus and I want to add this effect in a specific area so I'm going to click plus your cursor will turn now into this bullseye so I want to add it to the sky so I'm going to click up here in the top or towards the top left hand corner just like that and when I do that you'll notice that we have these kind of obscure looking kind of lines well what does this mean well this first line has a little slider on it in is I slide it you'll see a circle gets resized then below that is opacity and that's really just the opacity of the entire effect I could have it all the way down to zero so it won't affect anything or all the way up to all at a hundred percent and it's going to put its full effect in that area and what is that area well I clicked there on the blue sky and that area encompasses that circle what the control points do is it looks for texture color and tone and then tries to only affect that same texture color and tone that is within that circle so you could try to encompass everything but let's just say we're going to stay over here in the left part of the sky so when I click the compare button now to see a before after you can see that it's really affecting the sky but not affecting the buildings or the water below the sky whereas before I had the control port it affected everything at least this filter affected everything so that's the nature or the reason why you might want to use a control point now you'll notice though that I'm only doing this left part I probably like to do the right part as well so I could as I mentioned make that circle very big or I could just duplicate this control point and to do that hold the alt or option key its alt if you have a PC option if you have a Mac and just click on this little center button and then drag it off and you can see we duplicated the control point and this control point is having the using the same settings there in this filter and I could size that so it just affects the sky over there and now we'll do a before after there's before and there's after there's before and there's after so it's really affecting the sky and if you look I'm gonna do it before after and look at the buildings in the water and you can see it's really not affecting those as much now if we want to see exactly where we're affecting if I roll this little triangle open this is called an expose triangle where it says control points and we could see I added these two control points the first one I added is on the Left that's control point one and the second one is on the right that's control point two now to the right of those you'll see these little boxes if I click on this box you could see that it turned our image into this kind of black point negative look anywhere that's white is where that control point is affecting anywhere that's black it's not affecting it so the darker gray it gets the less that control point is being influenced or influencing those pixels now I can click the one below it and you can see we're doing the rest of the sky so basically we're affecting most of the sky and we're affecting the rest of the image minimally now I'm going to turn those off you could click this little button up at the top and that will click all your control points on or off not this like this view of your control points on or off just like that you could also turn a control point off or on by clicking on that box and that will turn them off or on now let's say I want to expand it a little more I it's okay you know but maybe I wanted to affect the clouds a little more well I mentioned that the whole point when you put it over something whatever pixels it's over it's looking at tone color and texture well it's affecting the tone color and texture of all the blue pixels that are in that circle of of influence I'd like to move it maybe over something else so I'm going to hold the alt or option key in its alt if you have a PC again an option if you have a Mac I'm going to get this other control point I'm going to put it over this cloud right here this white cloud alright so now let's do a compare there's before there's after now I think it might have enhanced it a little bit I'm going to turn control point 3 off and you can see how it brought these clouds out a little more now for the sake of argument let's turn this on for a minute you could see how it's affecting the building here as well I maybe don't want it to affect these buildings at all that's where this - control point comes from so I could click on this and by the way you could leave this in this mode in this kind of black and white mode and click on this - control point and I'm going to add a control point right on top of this light-colored building right there now you'll see it took the effect away from that building so this control point 4 is a - control point and it's removing the effect from that building and you can see it's on this building as well so I'm going to duplicate this control point by holding the alt or option key in and drag it over to this building as well and get it to effect that and I'm gonna bring the circle of influence way down on that one so it's just affecting the building I could do the same to this one so it's not affecting the clouds as much so it's not so basically we added three control points that are adding the detail extractor filter I'm adding the detail extractor filter to the sky blue sky on the left the blue sky on the right and the white clouds directly in the middle and I'm removing the detail extractor filter from this building and this building so I hope that's clear how you could use positive and negative control points now I could turn them all on by clicking that button you can see whatever's bright white is getting affected by the detail extractor filter and whatever is black it's getting influenced less and we'll do a compare there's before and there's afternoon you can see how the detail extractor now mainly is affecting the sky and it's affecting everything else minimally and I could go through and keep adding positive and negative control points to try to fine-tune it so it's not affecting you know this building or these roofs over here on the right as much so I could you know take my time if I wanted to do that but let's add another filter so I'm gonna click add filter right here and I'm gonna go over here and I'm going to add a foliage enhance filter so foliage we're gonna do that and you can see how this filter now is affecting everything right because we didn't add any control points right yet but I really just wanted to affect the grass so I'm going to click this little plus sign to add a control point that will add the effect and I'm going to click on the green grass over here on the left and you could see now bring the circle of influence so it's mainly on the grass and now we'll do a compare both for after and I could actually roll this open and I'll click and turn this actual control point off there's a on you can see it's affecting the grass right here it's not affecting any of the grass in front of these condos over here see that for and there's after so I want to do the grass over here as well the lawn over there so I'm gonna hold the alt or option key in again it's also if you have PC option if you have a Mac I'm gonna drag this over there and I'll resize it so it's just kind of getting that grass and I'm gonna copy it again I'm going to hold that ultra option key and drag it over there and you can see how you could go very quickly and let's say I want to do these trees as well bring it up there just like that I think that's good now I'll turn them all off by clicking right here there's before whoops sorry wrong button I'm sorry there's before and there's after before after so you could see how it's just affecting the foliage it's not affecting the buildings it's not affecting the sky at all the water at all just the grass and those trees that I put control points over so it's very very powerful tool takes a little bit getting used to especially if you're used to using masking because masks you know you paint in or paint off the effect it's much easier usually to use a brush in here you're kind of taking that circle and trying to make sure that circle encompasses where you want the effect either be laid down or be to be removed from so let's say I'm done with this let's just double check let's hold in the compare there's before and there's after and that's the kind of a subtle adjustment I wanted I wanted to enhance the sky a little bit and I wanted to bring out some color in the lawn and a little bit in those trees when I'm done and I want to return to Lightroom go over here to the right-hand panel at the very bottom and click on save and what it will do it will then rewrite your TIFF file that we created a minute ago and it's going to have all these adjustments written into that TIFF file and you'll notice then when we go back into Lightroom that those adjustments will be loaded into Lightroom as well well we'll see in a minute let this closed down then we'll go back into Lightroom here is our image that we just sent over into color effects pearl 4 and here's the original raw file and you could see the difference there's the original raw file and there's color effects pro 4 I probably overdid the law in a little bit I probably wouldn't want to made it that bright and radioactive looking but I think the sky is pretty much what I wanted so just as simple as that so that's how you use control points not only in color effects Pro 4 but pretty much in all the different NIC plugins so in our next video I'm going to show how to send an image from Photoshop into color effects Pro 4 and I'm going to process an image from beginning to end not in the Photoshop part of it but in the color effects pro 4 part of it and show you you know all the different not all the different filters because there's 55 of them but a number of the different filters and what you could actually do with color effects Pro 4 that will really enhance your photography thank you everyone that watches my videos I truly do appreciate it I'll talk to you guys soon you

Channel: Anthony Morganti

Views: 32,186

Keywords: photography, photographer, post processing, adobe, lightroom, photoshop, nik software, nik collection, nik, control points

Id: 8Xy3VPhN3EQ

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 01 2018