Landscape Photo Editing with the Nik Collection

[@kemerthomson]

Years ago I gave up on the Nik Collection too quickly because I found control points were such a different approach and there weren’t as many resources and demonstrations as there are now. After DxO Photolab 3 re-introduced me to control points, and thanks to more resources (especially yours) they have began to make complete sense, indeed are becoming natural. I’m still learning nuances, as I did in this video. We should be grateful that DxO saved this software, now a quarter century old. Just because Google once gave it away for free doesn’t mean that paying for it now is somehow “wrong.” I have found it to be an excellent investment, and they continue to support it, as with their most recent release.

[@RobinWhalley]

Very well said. I think when Google changed direction to pull out of the image editing market they did a lot of damage by giving the tools away. Now people expect to get them for free despite someone else picking up the support and development. Control Points make editing much easier and faster.

[@byoregon1]

Thx Robin. I always enjoy your Nik videos. That’s been my tool of choice since the actual “Nik” days.

[@RobinWhalley]

Mine too! Great set of tools.

[@stevehallam0850]

Excellent description of your editing process, Robin. It seems like a lot of work but the more effort you put in the more you get out.

[@RobinWhalley]

Thank you very much! It seems like a lot of work but it's quite quick and easy.

[@thejoyfultripod]

Another excellent tutorial - very useful. Thanks !

[@RobinWhalley]

You are welcome! Thank you

[@ianyorke2617]

Excellent demo, better than the official videos :-)

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you think so! I invest a lot of time and effort to produce them so it great to get feedback like this. Thank you.

[@petermaddern6653]

Thank you yet again Robin. Super easy to follow instructional video. I have found that my skies do get noisy and especially show up any dust spots on sensors or marks on filters so it's good to be shown ways of minimising the noise. I tend to move the image into Affinity and use the clone tool there to erase any marks that remain as I find it better that Photolab at this. I need to go through your 2 micro 4/3 editing videos slowly while editing an image to follow each step. Rain here today so will give me something to do.

[@RobinWhalley]

Thank you. It's good to hear that you found the video helpful.

[@brodybrysen9773]

i dont mean to be so off topic but does someone know of a way to get back into an Instagram account..? I was stupid lost my login password. I would love any tips you can offer me!

[@oliverdavis617]

@Brody Brysen Instablaster ;)

[@brodybrysen9773]

@Oliver Davis I really appreciate your reply. I found the site thru google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff now. Seems to take a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@brodybrysen9773]

@Oliver Davis it did the trick and I now got access to my account again. Im so happy:D Thanks so much you saved my account !

[@robcoates4394]

I tend to find the filter menus in Color Efex and Viveza a little confusing i.e. remembering which filter does what. I've made some notes from this video that should help a great deal. Many thanks and cheers from DownUnder. 👍

[@RobinWhalley]

"With great power and flexibility comes complexity" - Yoda. I'm pleased that the video helped. I tend to have a few "go to" filters that I use most of the time. I only look through the other options when I can't achieve what I want to.

[@richardtierney7724]

Excellent been using these plug ins ever since the became available....Thanks for the reminders :-)

[@RobinWhalley]

Great to hear! Thank you.

[@1600star1]

great demo.

[@RobinWhalley]

Thank you

[@marcthibault2835]

i prefer affinity photo plugin in to work with nik collection after DXO made first work.i have not photoshop and L"R" t.y.

[@RamblingTog]

With the greatest of respect it's fantastic but I'll still only get 10 cents on Shutterstock for all this effort.

[@RobinWhalley]

Change stock library then.

[@drazencavar1012]

Your videos are full of useful knowledge and experience, but I fear this demonstration proves the opposite, at least to myself, that such kind of approach is obsolete and overwhelming. It might be possible to find adequacy of control points after some practice, but they look as nightmare to me, and so untidy (how it's possible to organize that hive of dots on the screen?). As to the effects themselves, I believe Luminar can mimic 95% of them, Affinity Photo not to mention. It is understandable that people who learned complex things in times when such techniques were the only ones will not give them up easily, but all points toward conclusion that it's time to go on.

[@RobinWhalley]

I also have Luminar (I've used it for a long time) but I don't like some of the effects it produces with landscapes. I feel Nik provides me with greater control to achieve the look I want. It's a bit more hit and miss with Luminar, especially the AI controls. But each of us will have our preferred tools and it's good that we have different preferences or there would be no choice.

[@alangauld6079]

Luminar is probably the closest editor to ColorEfex in how it works. You don't have control points so you need to draw masks and use gradients etc. In practice thee isn't much difference between the two in my experience. But control points have a much more natural feathering so the edits are much less obvious. In Luminar the neaest equivalent to Viveza is probably the didge and burn tool, but its so much more limited. Affinity is a different kind of beast, it is more akin to Photoshop and most useful for cropping and cloning and detailed HSL work etc. And by the way I'm not a long term user of Nik, I only really started using it a couple of years ago after DxO bought it.