Nik Hdr Efex Pro 2 Manual

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Capture the Entire Dynamic Range By Shooting Manual HDR Brackets. Posted by in,,, Article by Today’s cameras are amazing for shooting HDR. The D800 takes 9 brackets and the 5D Mark III takes 7 brackets at once.

But what if your camera doesn’t take that many brackets? Or what if 7 exposures are still not enough!

Or maybe you just want more control. I am going to show you how I’ve been manually shooting my exposures to use in my HDR images for the past two years. Currently, I use a 5D Mark II.

It will take three bracketed exposures up to two stops apart each. If you want more than three you need to shoot them manually or use another work-around. I have been using Magic Lantern firmware for a few months and it will take up to 9 brackets. But I still prefer to shoot my brackets manually. I start by putting the camera in manual exposure mode and turn on Live View.

I choose my aperture based on the given situation. Then I dial my shutter speed until the image is exposed properly on the LCD of my camera so that I can focus. When shooting HDR, I will always focus by zooming in to 100% in Live View. The 5D Mark II has an exposure simulation mode where the screen simulates how the final image will appear. So if you are severely underexposed, the screen will appear black.

I like to dial my shutter speed so that it turns almost completely black. I will then turn my shutter speed dial up until the brightest parts of the image have detail in them. So if I’m shooting in a church, I will be sure that my exposure is dark enough that I have detail in the bright lights of the church.

This will be my baseline exposure. From here, I will turn the shutter speed dial to increase the exposure by one stop. I have my camera set so that every click is 1/3 of a stop.

So if I want to increase by a full stop I turn the dial three clicks. After the first two or three times you do this, you will have it mastered. Click, click, click, shoot. Click, click, click, shoot.

I continue to take exposures by increasing one stop and shooting. I watch my Live View and the resulting images on the LCD. I figure out where the darkest part of the image is. My goal now is to keep increasing by a stop until I can see all of the detail in the darkest park of the image. In a church, I’m probably looking at the area under the pews. Many times when I think I have the brightest exposure that I need, I take one more just in case.

Especially when I’m in a location that I may not return to. When I get these exposures back on my computer, I may or may not use all of them. But at least I have them if I need them. There is nothing more frustrating than getting back to the computer and realizing that part of the stained glass is blown out even in your darkest exposure.

Many times the brightest exposures are great for the shadows, but if they contain areas that are completely washed out where it was bright, you may not want to use that image in your HDR process. A potential downside to this technique is that you need to physically touch the camera in between images. This could lead to a misalignment of images. In my experience, this hasn’t been a problem. You need to have a good tripod so that your camera doesn’t move when you change the shutter speed. But even then, most of the HDR programs out there do a pretty good job of aligning your images if you need it.

Or look into a camera like the Canon 6D that you can control wirelessly with your phone or tablet. One unexpected benefit to using this technique is that it forces you to slow down. If you know that you are going to take three or four minutes to take each set of exposures, you will always make sure that you have your composition exactly right and your camera level before starting to take your brackets. You are much less likely to “run and gun” to get as many images as you can. So before you drop a lot of money on the latest top of the line camera to do HDR, consider using the camera that you already have and trying this technique. Once you start shooting your brackets this way, you may never want to go back.

I love to shoot the city of Chicago, teach photography, and help other photographers shoot HDR and the city at my site, You can also follow me at,, and. Great article, thanks, I had been experimenting with HDR for a while using my Nikon D7000, when I ended up buying a D800 I nearly died when I saw the bracketing went to 9 exposures, and you have the option to set it to 0.3, 0.7 or 1 stop, There is no 2 stop option. I appreciate your advice on shadow and highlight collection for extreme lighting conditions doing it manually. I’ll have to try it because even with 9 stops even under extreme conditions those couple of extra shots might come in handy. Chris, enjoyable article to read and, like you, I have ‘played around’ with manual bracketing.

However, like other Canon users I also take full advantage of the available firmware tweaks, ie Magic Lantern for for my 50D and CHDK for my S95 and G11. In most situations these days I find myself making full use of auto bracketing, which is built into the latest ML builds and works very well. In other words, I don’t ‘worry’ about scene dynamics, as ML takes as many brackets as required, at the Ev step that a specify. In the case of my S95 and G11, I have written some CHDK scripts that carry out auto bracketing, based on two bracketing strategies.

First I have a script that brackets automatically ‘up and down’ from my base 0Ev exposure; and stops when an image histogram’s exposure reaches either a dark or highlight thresahold (which is user definable). The other script I use is based on a form of ETTR-based shooting, where I ensure the base exposure (0Ev) captures the ‘darks’ that I want, leaving the camera script to keep reducing the exposure time, to capture the highlights, until none of the histogram is overexposed. I guess the bottom line is, that for Canon users, the world is our oyster when it comes to (auto) bracketing. Cheers Garry •. Chris I think the beauty of auto bracketing is that you can eliminate one ‘variable’ the potential mismatch between the sensor’s dynamic range and that of the scene.

This frees you up to focus on more important things such as composition. I don’t know how ML does auto bracketing, but my CHDK script keeps adjusting the exposure and looking at the histogram, in 12bit space by the way, until there are no overexposed highlights. BTW as I’m using CHDK I can also take the exposure beyond that which Canon sets as a limit, eg I can capture highlights at exposures of 1/20000, compared to the S95 limit of 1/1600. I have experimented with these extreme brackets and captured some interesting features,eg light bulb filaments. As to speed, the scripts run really fast. Hi Chris, thanks for this article. I still do have a question by the way: Ok let’s say I have time to do my bracketing and everything is static in my frame.

What about taking the maximum shots possible? I mean if I don’t want to take the chance of having blown out or black areas, I could shoot all the pictures I need from complet dark to complet white with a difference of one stop? In theory the more pictures you shoot the more precise you are.

So my question is: Is there a maximum limit? Will the blend become unprecise with too many shots? Does the HDR Software have maximum limits?

Should you always stay with the minimum shots corresponding to the light conditions? From my point of view, if you wanna be sure to miss nothing, why not just shooting the maximum possible. But I’m asking this because you wrote that once you’re in front of you computer, you don’t use all of them. Thanks a lot •.

Vic, if you are interested in learning Photoshop, but have been discouraged by the many tutorials that sound great, but then don’t really work when you try the instructions presented, if you are frustrated by it’s density, you are talking about me! However, being aquainted with Matt’s clarity in teaching, his ability to not leave out a single step in tutorials, I’ve seen in the past. I decided to try one more time. I purchased Matt’s Photoshop course and presto magic, I’m working in Photoshop and loving it. Well, not magically, being able to work in Photoshop is due to Matt’s meticulous, detailed instructions.

Because of my intense desire to learn to use Photoshop, I am ecstatic! Give the course a shot, you’ll love it because it works! You could be learning Photoshop with ease. I still can hardly believe it! Just sayin’... Edward Fox Hi Matt, Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my previous email. I should have said that Affinity Photo is very much like Photoshop and it does support some but not all plugins that work in Photoshop.

Nik does plug into Affinity Photo but On1 Effects does not. ON1 Effects can only be used as a standalone app with Affinity, so getting photos into On1 Effects is a more manual process and takes just a few more clicks. Since most of your course compares Nik to On1, its still very useful to me. Also, I follow you more to see where you take photos and how you stylize them than for LR and PS instruction. J Nik also works stand alone on OS X.

So, you can just open an image copy in one of them, alter the copy, then save it back to PS (or LR or Capture One Pro). In theory, it should remain working for some years or; until Apple updates its OS so much that it no longer works (and you decide to let that update happen) or, your Mac dies/ages out and you have to OS update.

Regardless, I have found that the same features in Nik are also more and more common in the other programs I use. I like the black and white and sharpening options Capture One Pro 9+ provides so, I don’t use Nik anymore (and I paid for it, albeit, when it was super cheap from Google). This is probably why Google is getting out. No more market as these once specialized features and apps are integrated directly into image editing software at all levels.

Doug I get that you’re endorsing On1 software likely because of future monetary reasons, Matt, but you cannot honestly think that ON1 Photo RAW is a legit replacement for the NIK suite. Fujitsu Loox N560 Manual there. First off, it is more of a replacement for LR, rather than just a plugin. It is also brand new-ish and has a long way to go in so far as how well it works. I own it, so feel I can speak to its quality.

The effects and presets are rubbish. Sort of in the same vain as how the HDR software that what’s his face put his name behind from Stuck In Customs. To me, the range of effects and presets are mostly cheesy, and you really have to dig in order to find gold, which IMO isn’t worth the bother. Granted, it’s not expensive, and one can try it for free and find out if they like it. I think its best qualities are its shadow recovery and how it handles the RAW processing algorithms for Fuji X Trans sensors. There’s no support for NIK anymore, but it’s 64bit software, which means that it is fine as it is, until 64bit OS is no longer valid.

And that won’t be for a while. I haven’t tried Alien Exposure or Topaz in a long time, but have a feeling that they’d be better suited for such work.

Hey Doug – you’re of course entitled to your opinion, so hopefully you’re okay with my opinion. It works for me and plenty of other people out there. It’s a VERY common question I get asked, so I think it’s fair I share my thoughts. This is what I personally use.

Opera Pms Version 5 Free Download more. Hopefully you can respect. And even though I disagree with you, that’s not a reason to throw “money reasons” in your comment as a reason that I would be writing about this.

You can use your filters I can use mine and we can both let everyone else decide what’s best for them 🙂 Thanks! Thank you for doing this. After PS crashed because I was using NIK, I put NIK on a old computer that no longer had an internet connection-preventing any potential updates from anyone.

If I wanted to use NIK I would save it on my good computer and put it on a flash drive and then use it on the bad computer. I would use the things in NIK, save it to the flash drive and go back to the good computer and finish my work in PS.

Yes, I do have the latest version of ON 1. It worked but was time consuming.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. I promise you I will use it a lot till I memorize it! Any further development Nik is dead (unless it goes open source) but it does still work with CorelPSP, Photoshop CS3-6, and CC. I still use ColorEFEX 4 to correct white balance and a few other tools, and Define. Well, for me, the noise reduction in On1 PhotoRaw just doesn’t quite do it for me at this time. Presets/Effects – As with Nik, some are great, some are good, some I avoid.

With the:Local Adjustments” it is so easy to fine tune. One of the recent Preset/Filter package B&W – Dark vs Light, in my opinion, is equal to Nik SilverEfex. The only problem I have with On1Raw is the massive memory leak issue. 27gbs of 32gb being used when ‘rendering’, forcing a hard reboot/restart. Nik doesn’t do or cause that. Yes, I know I could use On1 10.5 (and have resorted to it out of frustration at times), but I have created presets in ON1 PhotoRaw, and they aren’t backwards compatible.

John Davis I have used Nik’s products for years, but overall mostly Viveza. The Nik selection tool is very unique. One of my hobbies is bird and animal photography and this is where Viveza excels. If, for example, there is red on the bird but perhaps it is in the shadows or muted, etc., I can quickly use Nik’s selection tool and limit the size.

In mere seconds I can affect only the desired color of the bird/animal and change its appearance. No masks needed.

Wildlife Photos almost always have shadows where you do not desire them and so on. If there is another product that will let me select specific colors and locations within an image I would love to know.

When Viveza no longer works I will be in a pi8nch. When processing hundreds of photos at a time, Nik’s selection tool and ease of altering specific colors has become very appreciated. Hans Habereder hi matt like you i also use Nik. I found it has much better colour and effects filters than anything elso, even On 1 raw which i own but do not use for that specific reason. Thats why i stuck with Nik even after your messages.

I feel On 1 now has an opportunity to match the colour and effects algorithms and filters of Nik. If they do so they will have a winner. Until then i will use lightroom, Affinity Photo and Nik until it fails. Your course is very informative thank you so much. Doug I think that On1 offers some real advantages over Nik in many ways, but IMO, there is one most important way in which it cannot.

I was never a fan of Color Efex, I’m not into that kind of processing. But I used SEP all the time. The B&W algorithms IMO are bar-none, the best I’ve seen in terms of giving a photo a very organic, and almost film like quality to them.

I do not see this with On1 at all. If Phase One can refine the processing algorithms and get closer to that, I’d be thrilled.

I bought On1 Photo RAW just to see how it handles Fuji X-Trans files, and it does better than LR, but it still has a ways to go with simple things like highlight recovery, contrast and sharpening etc. Though, it is the king of shadow recovery. It hasn’t made me give up Capture One Pro and Affinity Photo, not even close.

But it’s coming along quite nicely and quickly. Good job with the tutorials Matt. Troy Keesee Hi Mattlittle confused over the whole thing. I have been a NIK user since you had to pay big bucks for it and I see you are offering this FREE or what appears to be FREE course/tutorial on how OnOne can replace NIK. As I said I paid big bucks for NIK. I can only assume mine still works.

Sadly I have been down from an accident for 6 months and trying to keep up with all that is taking place. So to do the free course I can download OnOne for 30 days free and the NIK material is part of this???? Or can I get just the NIK comparison with the PDF separate.

Right now I am having to think twice about any expenses and yet I feel I need to find something to replace NIK with or am I thinking too hard about this. I see FREE so many times and end up with a big chunk at the end of the commerical and it angers. Just say it up front.

I am just trying to figure out what is best in my case without a sudden outlay that I may not ever use. Troy Keesee •. This is just a guide to show you what you had in Nik and how it corresponds to ON1. There are two versions of ON1 Effects. The newest ON1 Photo Raw 2017 which includes ON1 Effects (similar to Nik Color Efex, Black and white, and Analog Efex). That is a free 30 day trial.

Then ON1 also offers last year’s version of ON1 Effects as a free download (doesn’t expire). I don’t know how long they’ll update it for, but it is free and you can use it as long as it works which should be a while. But the course is from me the rest is up to you to go download from their respective sources (Nik which you already own and ON1’s website). Hope that helps 🙂 •. I mentioned my personal workflow a few times in the course.

Lightroom >Photoshop (maybe 60% of the time) >ON1 Effects for finishing touches (maybe 40% of the time). Things like glows, certain matte-like effects, dynamic contrast, and black and whites are reasons I turn to effects. As for what LR gives me that ON1 doesn’t – I don’t think it’s a matter of what it has or hasn’t. All of the programs out today are similar. I personally use an Adobe workflow. They all have the same sliders though, and for me the LR/PS workflow is just what I’ve been using for 20+ years so it’s what I choose to stick with. Hello Matt, What I’m most interested in, and will miss the most when my Nik software finally becomes unusable, is Viveza2.

The intuitive ability to manually add, reposition, resize, and stack multiple control points, each which can be manipulated in terms of brightness, contrast, saturation, structure, and levels is to me, unsurpassed. You wrote in your course description that these are tasks best performed in a raw editor (I use Photoshop). I’m presuming that you meant through the use of masks and adjustment layers.

If so, I guess that these aren’t nearly as user-friendly, quick, and intuitiveto me at least. Also, you mention that people don’t use curves anymore. What do you mean – why do you believe this? I’ve used ON1 and Topaz in the past for filters but always found myself using Nik far more, especially when trying to improve less-than-optimal product photos.

Most of the tutorial examples I’ve seen from ON1, Topaz, and others that show how to improve image quality start with what I think are ideal, not real-world images. This is where Viveza shines for me, allowing me to remove product blemishes, contrast, and the like easily before I even get to the point of adding filters. Do you think there is any chance that ON1 will incorporate control points and manipulation in a similar manner? Maureen Arthur Hi Matt I am a LR user, Nik user and teaching myself PS thru your course- Adobe CC – thank you very much My question relates to finding the best, fastest photo browser?

I have tried Bridge but too slow! LR of course is too slow!

I recently also tried Faststone which at least seems to be quicker but still not exactly what I want. I believe On1 Browse is very good.

Do I assume correctly that the only way to have Browse is by purchasing On1 Photo 2017? Also if this is the case – is it better to install On1 Photo 2017 as the LR plugin or as the stand alone version?

Is there any other browsing, sorting, software you could suggest. I really just want a simple way of sorting and culling images quickly before taking them into LR – picks, rejects ect Thank you for your time and the mountain of information you have made available here regarding Nik to On1. Very much appreciated.

Hi Maureen – I import my photos in to LR with Standard Previews checked. And when I review them, it’s pretty darn fast in the Library module. SO maybe give that a try. If you’re not happy with that, ON1 Browse is great too.

I use it for my non-LR photos that are older and I don’t import since I just leave them on drives. I’d go ahead and install the whole shebang ON1 Browse is standalone and doesn’t operate through LR, but if you just do the default install and let it do everything you’re good to go. Matt, Thank you for taking time to put these videos together, they do help if you are trying to get an effect that someone has used for years in Nik that may not work in the future.

I have used Nik and loved working with it. The control point technology could allow you to apply effects in a way that is almost impossible in other software.

It’s sad that google is taking that away from us. But my real question is not how to get an effect in OnOne just like an effect I could get in Nik.

You mentioned that there are effects in Nik that simply don’t have a good cross over to OnOne (like Polaroid). Are there effects in OnOne that you really like that are hard or impossible to create in Nik? I love experimenting. OnOne is a very powerful program and has been updated in the last few years unlike Nik.

What effects have you found that you like in OnOne that don’t exist in Nik? Are there any? Tracie Louise I’ve been a long time Nik user but I also have been using On1 since the beginning.

All I really use Nik for now is Dfine, which is my go to noise reduction and I use it on about every image. I also use Viveza still.

Not as much as I did, but it still comes in handy for making some precise adjustments. I do also use Efex but really only the Tonal Contrast (Soft), it does a nice job of blurring the background that you don’t get with the blur in On1 it’s a bit of a signature look for me. I haven’t done any updates on my computer software for fear of losing my Nik. I know it will happen eventually, but it’s become such an integral part of my work, especially the Dfine, even though I have several other nose editing options, I just like it best.