Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Overview

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OVERVIEW

Completely Original. Completely Indispensable.

Nik Software Color Efex Pro™ 3.0 filters are the leading photographic filters for digital photography. The award-winning Color Efex Pro 3.0 filters are widely used by many of today's professional photographers around the world to save time and get professional level results. Whether you choose the Complete Edition, Select Edition, or Standard Edition, you'll get traditional and stylizing filters that offer virtually endless possibilities to enhance and transform images quickly and easily.

Patented U Point® technology provides the ultimate control to selectively apply enhancements without the need for any complicated masks, layers or selections. Control color, light and tonality in your images and create unique enhancements with professional results. With 52 filters and over 250 effects found in Color Efex Pro 3.0, you can perform high quality retouching, color correction, and endless creative enhancements to your photographs.

Updates to old favorites such as Classical Soft Focus, Darken/Lighten Center, and Vignette filters are joined by exciting new filters Film Effects, Glamour Glow, High Key, Tonal Contrast, Bleach Bypass, and more. The result is nothing less than the most complete, most useful collection of photographic filters you can add to your toolkit.

NEW FEATURES

Color Efex Pro 3.0

Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 has been significantly updated to provide photo enthusiasts and professional photographers alike with the most powerful yet easy to use set of photographic filters ever created. DSLR owners will revel in the wide range of quick and easy fixes to dramatically improve their photos with just a few clicks of the mouse. Professional wedding, nature, commercial, and portrait photographers will appreciate the speed of workflow and advanced features designed to support uniquely creative styles and deliver class-leading power.

U Point® Technology

U Point powered Control Points make it easy to selectively add, modify and remove a Filter effect using convenient sliders. Award-winning U Point technology gives you ultimate control to selectively apply enhancements without the need for any complicated masks, layers or selections.

New Filters

The new filters in Color Efex Pro 3.0 range from creative enhancements and special effects to re-touching tools and over 30 conventional film emulation filter effects. New filters include Film Grain, Film Effect, Glamour Glow, Selective Contrast, High Key, Low Key, Polaroid Transfer, Cross Balance filters, and more. Previously available filters have also been updated to provide even more options. Click here to see a complete list of filters, descriptions and before/after samples.

New Interface

The new resizable interface lets you easily accommodate large monitor configurations, preview before and after results, and quickly access the entire range of unique tools to match your workflow.

Powerful Selective Tool

Unique among photographic filter software on the market today, the Color Efex Pro 3.0 Selective Tool allows you to quickly and easily brush any filter effect into your image. Layers and masks are created automatically, so you are free to create and experiment unfettered.

Color Efex Pro 3.0 Interface

Color Efex Pro 2.0 users will notice the extensively reworked interface in version 3.0, the result of both deep study into the look and feel that professional photographers expect in modern applications and requests from Nik Software users.

The new, completely resizable interface is a professional photographic tool: color-neutral with a medium-gray background and a strong focus on efficient workflow. Color Efex Pro 3.0 groups major controls close together for greater efficiency, letting you achieve excellent results in less time.

Selective Functionality in Color Efex Pro 3.0

In addition to being able to apply photographic filter effects and enhancements to the entire image globally, selectively applying them to specific areas of an image allows photographers the greatest degree of control over their finished work. With Color Efex Pro 3.0, you can employ two primary selective options:
  • Control Points

    U Point technology automatically isolates objects based on their unique characteristics and permits you to easily apply enhancements using simple sliders. No more complicated and imprecise selections or layer masks!

  • Selective Tool

    Working in concert with Adobe® Photoshop® or Photoshop Element's Brush Tool, you can easily apply, or “brush on,” photographic enhancements to an image. Color Efex Pro automatically creates and manages layers and layer masks behind the scenes, so you don't have to. This is ideal for use with a Wacom® Pen Tablet.
These different methods were designed to enable you to work in the style that suits your workflow best and increase your efficiency dramatically.

Control Points

The U Point powered Control Points let you identify and isolate objects within a photograph by placing a Control Point on the object or area to be affected. By analyzing the color, tonality, detail, and location, the Control Point automatically determines where and how to apply certain effects, based on your needs.

If you're familiar with using more “painterly” methods to apply effects to images (as in all other image editing software), this can take a few minutes to get used to, however the learning will be well worth it!

Control Points allow for very powerful and precise selective application of filter effects within Color Efex Pro 3.0 without having to make complicated masks or selections.
  • First, open your image in Adobe® Photoshop® or Adobe® Photoshop® Elements.
  • Second, open the Color Efex Pro 3.0 interface and select the Midnight filter. The filter will be applied to the entire image by default.
  • Third, add a 0% Control Point and place the Control Point on the skin to remove the effect from the bride's skin. Adjust the size slider to select all of the skin with the U Point powered Control Point.
  • Finally, Click OK to apply the filter to the image and return to Photoshop.
Selective Tool

The Selective Tool in Color Efex Pro 3.0 lets you quickly and easily brush filter enhancements to your image in a more “painterly” manner using the built-in tools found in Adobe® Photoshop® or Photoshop Elements. Layers and masks are created automatically, so you are free to create and experiment with various enhancements that will improve the quality of your photography.

The Selective tool can also be used with pressure sensitive tablets such as a Wacom® Pen Tablet to selectively apply filter effects.

Color Efex Pro 3.0 Filter List

Recognized as the leader in digital photographic filters, the three editions available for Color Efex Pro 3.0 provide you with a wide range of filters and effects that make enhancing and transforming your images better than ever. The chart below will help you decide which edition will best suit your needs

* = New filters added to Color Efex Pro 3.0
  • Brilliance/Warmth
  • Burnt Sienna
  • Color Stylizer
  • Contrast Only
  • Detail Stylizer
  • Graduated Filters
  • Ink
  • Old Photo
  • Pastel
  • Polarization
  • Remove Color Cast
  • Saturation Stylizer
  • Skylight Filter
  • Solarization
  • Sunshine
  • B/W Conversion
  • Bi-Color Filters
  • Bi-Color User Defined
  • Bleach Bypass *
  • Classical Soft Focus
  • Colorize
  • Contrast Color Range
  • Darken/Lighten Center
  • Film Grain *
  • Flux
  • Graduated Neutral Density
  • Graduated User Defined
  • Infrared Thermal Camera
  • Midnight
  • Monday Morning
  • Paper Toner
  • Photo Stylizer
  • Vignette
  • Vignette Blur
  • White Neutralizer
  • Cross Balance *
  • Cross Processing
  • Duplex
  • Dynamic Skin Softener
  • Film Effects *
  • Fog
  • Foliage
  • Glamour Glow *
  • Graduated Fog
  • High Key *
  • Indian Summer
  • Infrared Film
  • Low Key *
  • Polaroid Transfer *
  • Pro Contrast
  • Reflector Effects
  • Tonal Contrast *
System Requirements

Windows
  • Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition,
  • Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista (32-bit only)
  • Pentium III 1GHz or better 256 MB RAM
  • Adobe Photoshop 7 through CS3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 through 6.0, or Adobe Photoshop Plug-in Compatible Application*
Macintosh
  • Macintosh OS 10.4 or later
  • G4, G5, Intel® Core™ Solo, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Xeon
  • 256 MB RAM
  • Adobe Photoshop CS2 through CS3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, or Adobe Photoshop plug-in compatible application

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