Updates to my FREE Intro to Lightroom and Photoshop e-book

Those who can't...

Randall Morter's Introduction to
Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop

For some reason I can't figure out or shake, I have not taken a photograph since January 1st of this year, 2017. I keep watching my YouTubes or other videos trying to get motivated but to no avail.

What I have been doing, though, is working on a brief text to use to teach an introductory class on Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop at my workplace. My employer has arranged for all of its employees to have the full suite of Adobe software including the Photography Plan applications.

I have offered to teach an introductory class that will briefly cover Lightroom, Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Bridge. I don't plan to go into great detail regarding post processing, and I will only barely touch on Bridge since I don't really use it.

I decided to write down some information in my own text for this class. It's still a work in progress; I have barely touched on Photoshop yet. But if you're interested it's available for free on my Dropbox site at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1r2msmmqcef4707/RandallMorterMVCNotes.pdf?dl=0

If you do look at it, I'd like to hear your thoughts. You can post comments below. Thanks for looking!

The Adobe Photoshop CC Book by Scott Kelby - Review

Short Review: The Adobe Photoshop CC Book

I have watched a lot of Scott Kelby's YouTube videos, including his weekly show called "The Grid". I like his show and his guests. I have picked up a number of good tips from him such as the one that led me to purchase the Tether Tools Case Air. He's shown me a number of good ideas for using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. When he came out with this new Photoshop CC book I decided to try it. I was hoping to get even more cool tips.

I got this in January, 2017, from Amazon. It's a decent sized book, clocking in at 360 pages. Almost every page is split into two - images and screenshots on the inside of the page and text on the outside of the page. The text illustrates a concept and the images or screenshots show the steps or results of the steps.

Pros (or is it "prose"?)

The book covers probably everything you'd need to know to edit photographs using Adobe Photoshop. He concentrates on using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) for the basic edits, and, in my opinion, rightfully so. I don't remember if he mentions it, but if you shoot RAW, you'll probably be working with greater bit depth which generally works better with the edits. The more you can do in ACR the better.

I liked his writing style and the book format. He doesn't waste a lot of space or writing. He provides a short explanation of a problem and how it can be addressed then explains the steps to accomplish the task. Not much nonsense. It makes for a book that can be a useful reference - if you need a refresher on how to do something you can turn to that section and you'll quickly get the instructions for completing the edit.

Most of the individual edits take only 1 or 2 pages including the images. There are some that span a few more pages.

He provides some quick tips at the end of each chapter that are usually a few sentences at most. These can include keyboard shortcuts.

The book is printed on nice, glossy paper. I think I only saw one or two spelling errors.

Cons

I only have one personal minor complaint about the book, and one comment.

My complaint may not apply to everyone and I also don't know that much can be done about it without making the book more expensive. I had problems seeing some of the details in some of the images with my old eyes. I don't think I would have had the same problem some years ago. If the images were larger, however, it could double the size of the book and that would make it even more expensive. The only suggestion I can offer is that maybe it'd be cool if all of the images were available online (he does have a companion website for the book but I haven't visited it - perhaps the images are already there).

My comment is also self-centered... I did read the book cover to cover, although I skimmed over the sections pertaining to portraits since I don't shoot them. I found that I already knew most of the material. I picked up a few things that were new but not many. I've been using Photoshop for a couple of years now and have watched a lot of videos plus I have the Martin Evening Photoshop CC book (the 2013 edition) so I've learned a lot about processing images. I was just hoping that I'd pick up even more "insider" tips.

The Bottom Line

I like this book a lot. There's a lot in it, Scott's writing style is easy to understand and follow. It doesn't cover every filter or every menu item, just the ones you're likely to use when editing a photograph. Note that it is listed as NOT targeting beginners so there are some steps he doesn't cover such as a lot of the preferences, how to use Adobe Bridge, etc.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a thorough guide to Adobe Photoshop CC for editing photographs.

Adobe's "My Portfolio"

Basic Training

Adobe Portfolio Website

Okay, I haven't been out shooting since New Year's Day, but that's a different story. Instead, I've been working on some post processing practicing, including buying Scott Kelby's Photoshop CC 2017 book. I'm about 1/3 of the way through it and may write a bit of a review later.

Besides his book, I have watched a lot of his "The Grid" videos (http://kelbytv.com/thegrid/) and get quite a bit of information from his show. On his recent episode about "Is Your Presentation Killing Your Photography - Episode 269", he mentioned the Adobe Portfolio hosting as a great option for photographers.

I thought I'd check it out this weekend...

I like it

Okay, I gave it away. I'm not planning on writing a long bit on this host, at this point anyway. I just started using it this afternoon and after about 6 hours it looks promising. So much so that I may just use it instead of my SmugMug site.

Before getting much farther, check out my new site at: https://randallmorter.myportfolio.com.

I have a few of points to make...

Free for Adobe Photographer CC Subscribers

This was the thing that Scott Kelby mentioned which caught my attention. If you're paying the $10 per month (and he has a discount available, by the way), you get a free hosting account! 

Simple Layouts

There aren't a boatload of layouts available but there's probably enough because you can customize them quite a bit. I'm using the "Marta" layout. You can see my site looks different than their examples.

There are some customizations I wish were available but aren't. But I seem to have gotten around them okay so far.

Notable Benefits

Here are a few things that I immediately like:

• It's free for me and other Adobe Photo CC subscribers!
• It's got a "responsive" design - it scales nicely for my iPhone. There are previews on the editor to let you see how it will look on smaller monitors.
• It's freeish!
• There aren't a lot of options and the ones that are there are pretty intuitive, at least if you've used any other WYSIWYG editor (I've used SmugMug and jAlbum).
• You can order your images manually.
• It beats writing your own web site!
• It doesn't cost me any more because it's freeish!

Notable Limitations

Here are a few of the limitations:

• No shopping cart. It won't work for selling your photography directly.
• No way to put any of your own scripts in the site - you can't embed 3rd party shopping carts.
• I wish there was a way to limit vertical orientation photographs so that they fit on the viewer's screen. You can kind of get around it with a lightbox but I wish that extra level of button clicking wasn't necessary.
• You can't enter text on a "gallery".
• The site doesn't use any of your photo's EXIF data.

What took me so long?

I wasn't aware of it, but I'll bet there was information about it in one of the Adobe newsletters that I get but never look at.

As for the time required to set it up, I found out you can kind of automate things almost like the SmugMug plugin for Lightroom. You have to set up and enable syncing to Lightroom mobile. Once you do that you can create a collection in Lightroom that is "syncable", add images to it, and they're automatically uploaded to an Adobe Lightroom site. From there you can import them into your portfolio after you create a "project".

I'll post more about this after I've used it a bit more...

Photoshop CC 2017 Update

The New Phone Book is Here!

Regarding the new Photoshop version, I'd like to be as excited as Steve Martin was about seeing his name in a phone book. I keep hoping! But this version seems to only have some minor updates or enhancements, at least for photography users.

I don't use Photoshop that much to begin with, and I keep hoping I'll see more reason to use it. I primarily use Lightroom. I find it quicker and less fiddly than Photoshop. There are times, however, especially for healing or cloning items that you don't want, where Photoshop provides the control that you just don't get in Lightroom.

As for my wishlist, I wish that they'd re-organize their user interface. Maybe it's just me but I don't see the distinction between filters and tools, or why there are links for some types of layers (Brightness and Contrast) above the list of layers. I don't understand why things are scattered all around the display without much apparent reason or order. But I am probably too old school and too little millennial to enjoy having to search for things in a cluttered and nonsensical user interface. I'm also one of those people that hate the Microsoft "ribbon" garbage.

I recently had occasion to look at a book I likely hadn't opened once in the last 35 years, "Standard Mathematical Tables", 27th Edition, by William H. Beyer. I no longer remember how to use many of the various equations, but it was a pleasure seeing how well organized complex information can be.

I remember a software program I wrote in the mid or early 1980's that provided parts breakdowns for recreational vehicle equipment and how well it was organized, allowing you to drill down to find an individual part for a specific automotive refrigerator manufacturers model for example.

I think there is often a disconnect in software user interfaces because software developers create something such as an enhancement to Photoshop and stick a link to it in the menu that they were working in when they came up with the idea rather than considering where it might be better placed with regard to work flow. I've done it and seen it. Rogue software developers end up adding functionality to a user interface instead of leaving that to (in this case) a photographer (or other end user type) that actually uses the software.

Granted, Photoshop has a lot of functionality in it that I don't even use, such as creating 3-D objects. They've somewhat addressed the issue by offering different user type layouts. I just wish they were more flexible or that the functionality wasn't laid out so confusing in the first place. I'll end my rant here.

Post Processing Blues in my Yosemite Photographs

Removing a Blue Cast

Half Dome from Olmsted Point

When I was in Yosemite in early September, 2016 for my first visit, the skies were almost completely clear of clouds the entire time - the few clouds that were in the sky were small and almost singular. That meant my photographs had a lot of blue in them if I included the sky, but it also resulted in the granite reflecting a lot of blue.

I processed and posted a few of my shots to share them with others. After I saw them again a couple of days later, especially in the smaller thumbnails, it bothered me how blue the mountains like Half Dome looked. The entire images had blue casts to them and that wasn't how I remembered them looking when I was there.

I can't say for sure that they didn't appear to have blue cast in person, but I don't remember it. I think that as a human my brain probably understood that the granite wasn't actually blue.

I went back into Adobe Lightroom to alter the images. I just did a selection of the peaks or domes using a brush in Lightroom and changed the Temperature (White Balance) of the selected area to a warmer setting in order to make the domes look more like I imagine that I remember them. Note that the granite in the foreground does not appear blue and I did not touch it up.

Adding Blue to the Sky in Post Processing

This image of Half Dome still has some blue in the darker areas but the lighter areas are warmed up. The strange thing is that the sky isn't terribly blue either. I brought out the blue in the top of the image using a graduated filter in Lightroom in this shot. The original is more white, like the lower half of the sky.

I didn't use a graduated neutral density filter when I shot this and I'm not sure how well it would have worked. The problem with this shot is that I'd like the sky to be darkened but Half Dome sticks up into the sky where you want the darkening. Half Dome would get darkened as well. Perhaps that could be overcome in Lightroom but then I'd just be doing a different set of adjustments.

Dehaze added more Blue Cast

Half Dome from Big Oak Flat Road

The images where there was some distance to the peaks often had a "haze" in them which should be a perfect time to use the Lightroom Dehaze control. I also noticed that increasing the Dehaze also increased the blue cast as shown in the shot to the left.

Again, I went back to adjust the color cast using a brush and changing the temperature of the selection. In this shot I did more temperature adjustment of Half Dome than of the other middle hill on the right. It was closer and didn't turn as blue.

I didn't adjust the sky as much in this shot; it was blue from the top down.

Kudos

Processing these photographs has been more of a challenge than I expected. I have tried rendering some of them in black and white but I haven't been much happier with the way they look in black and white, mainly, I think, because of the boring sky. What I have gained is an appreciation for the amazing captures of the Yosemite scenery by others. The scenery is very beautiful and impressive but to get an image that stands out you really need the sky to match the landscape with interesting clouds and you need to try different things with the capture to control light. I want to go try again!

Some Photoshop CC Post-processing Notes - Part 2

This is a continuation of my prior post: Some Photoshop CC Post-processing Notes - Part 1

---

Once I got the jesses removed I turned my attention to trying to make the owl stand out a bit more.

I started with a crop - using the "rule of thirds" guidelines in the Photoshop crop tool I reduced the image so that the owl's body was on the left 1/3 line. I decided to keep the entire stump in the image but cropped out some of the background on the right side of the image. By doing the crop I also reduced the amount of sky in the image. I left a bit more room above the owl's head than I did below his feet, in the hope of preventing the image from looking like he was being crowded on top.

Add a bit of Blur

Since a viewers eye tends to go to the brightest and sharpest objects in an image, I decided to blur out the portion of the stump on the right. It was apparently in the same focal plane as the owl's eyes because it was pretty sharp.

The way I blurred out the stump was to make another copy of the "Merge & Cleanup" layer and place it above that layer. An easy way to do that is select the desired layer and press [CTRL] [J]. This will create a copy and paste it in to a new layer above the one selected. I labelled this layer "Blur". 

With the "Blur" layer selected I clicked on the "Filter" menu, hovered over "Blur" and selected "Gaussian Blur...". Using the dialog I chose to blur the image quite a bit but left it to where there was some detail remaining in the target stump area. 

Mask

Then I added a black layer mask by holding down the [ALT] key while clicking on the mask icon.That will create a fully black layer mask, hiding the "Blur" layer. Next I used a regular brush with white selected as the foreground and about a 10% opacity to paint over the offending portion of the stump. This allows the blurred version of the stump to show through and give the overall effect of blurring out that area of the image. It's quicker than working with the original layer and trying to mask and blur that area.

Dodge and Burn

Following the blurring, I turned my attention to some lighting control. I'd already applied some lighting changes with Nik Color Efex Pro 4, but I thought I'd do a bit more. 

I decided to try to darken the sides a bit, but I wanted more darkening on the right side than the left since the owl was closer to the left side. I wanted to just add a "Brightness / Contrast" adjustment layer and use a mask so first I clicked on the "Blur" layer to select it to ensure that my adjustment layer would be added at the top of the layer stack and then clicked on the "Brightness / Contrast" adjustment layer icon.

I dragged the brightness down until I liked it on the edges. I also reduced the contrast just to kind of make the area less attractive to the eye although there wasn't much in this particular image that was affected. I added a mask to the layer. Then I selected a black foreground and used the gradient fill and the "Reflected Gradient" setting and dragged horizontally across the image to create a mask over the top of the owl, hiding the brightness reduction from that area. It did take some number of attempts to get the mask in the right position. I found I liked it best when the center of the mask was on the owl's beak.

Also, I had to go back and forth with the mask colors. If you end up getting a full black mask with a white area over the subject you can click on the mask in the layers and then press [CTRL] [I] to invert the mask.

I decided to try a bit more additional dodging and burning. In Photoshop I tend to follow similar steps as I just outlined. Create a "Brightness / Contrast" adjustment layer and bump up the brightness for a "Dodge" layer and decrease the brightness for a "Burn" layer. When adjusting the brightness sliders I look at the object I want to change and then adjust the slider more than necessary. Then you can add a full black layer mask and paint over the desired object with a white brush to add either the dodge or burn amounts. It's a little different than Lightroom where you can just adjust what you want the brush to do and then brush over the image.

I labelled my "Burn" and "Dodge" layers appropriately. I only ended up with a bit of a burning on that right portion of the stump to further get out out of the attention of my eye, and did a bit of a dodge on the owl's wings to bring them up a bit more. This could also have been done by going back to the camera raw object but since I'd made a copy of that and worked on cloning out the jesses, I'd have had to redo that step again if I wanted to adjust in ACR. This is a good pointer to try to make sure that you get the lighting right in ACR if possible.

Finally I grouped the three lighting layers into a layer group and labelled it "Dodge & Burn". I'm not sure you can see a lot of difference in these screen shots but here's where were at now:

Dodging and Burning layers applied

Note that the bottom Smart Object layer can be turned off if desired; the layers on top completely mask it. I don't think it matters one way or the other if it's on or not.

Some more Pop Please

I decided to try to add a bit more to try to make the image stand out.

First I added some more contrast using a "Curves" adjustment layer with a full black mask. I clicked on the little finger with arrow icon, clicked on various areas of the owl, and then raised or lowered the values to try to bring out additional contrast in those colors. I renamed the layer to "Contrast".

Next I added an overall Warming Filter layer by clicking on the "Photo Filter" adjustment layer and selecting the "Warming Filter (85)". I liked it but dropped the layer opacity to 85% to reduce the effect and make it a bit more subtle. I renamed the layer to "Warming Filter".

Note that the "Layer 1" in my Photoshop project is not used nor does it do anything. It's just there to make you wonder what magic I did in that layer. Did it work?

I liked the image at this point but decided to add a bit more vignette so I applied another "Brightness / Contrast" adjustment layer. I dropped the brightness again then added a fully white mask. I used another gradient fill but this time selected the "Radial Gradient" option, dragged a line to cause the center of the gradient to be centered on the front of the owl's face until I liked it, then adjusted the opacity to add a bit more of a natural "lens" type vignette although it wasn't exactly centered on the image. I just wanted to try to make the eye naturally look first at the owl's head.

After I did that I felt the image was a bit too dark over all so I did basically the opposite, adding another "Brightness / Contrast" adjustment layer but increased the brightness following up with another layer mask to not wipe out the vignette I just added. At that point I felt I was done! Here's the final image again in Photoshop:

Photoshop with all edits

Final Output

The last step is to output the results for whatever purpose desired. I like the Nik Sharpener Pro 3 Output Sharpener. It offers a lot of control although it does require playing around with it to get it the way you want. Again, the plugin allows you to fine tune areas that you want sharpened and to avoid adding sharpening to areas you don't. After blurring the stump on the right why would I want to sharpen it now?

As mentioned earlier, the plugins work on TIF files. The process I'm using right now (I'm sure I'll learn a better way in the future) is to export my edited image from Photoshop as a TIF copy (as opposed to saving with layers). I export at the full size of the image.

Next I open the TIF file in another Photoshop tab. I convert the image layer to a Smart Object so that I can re-edit the settings I'm about to apply if I want to.

Nik Sharpener Pro 3 Output Sharpener

I open the image with the Nik Sharpener Pro 3 Output Sharpener. Then I zoomed in to 100 % on the owl's eye. That's the part I want to have sharp but not too sharp. I have some presets I've saved, the main one I start with is where I've set the "Adaptive Sharpening" slider to 20%, the "Output Sharpening Strength" I left at 100%, and the "Structure", "Local Contrast", and "Focus" controls I have at 3% each. I find this is a decent starting point. 

Note that when you open Sharpener Pro 3 it will use the most recent settings. To reset everything you can click on a different preset and then re-click on the one you want to start with.

Sharpening is a matter of taste and experience using the tool. I sharpened this image for full size display purposes and saved it as a JPEG. I have found it best for met to then open that image in the Windows image previewer and look at it. Sometimes I need to make additional edits and save as JPEG again until I get a version that I like.

But that's not the end...

If you want a different size of the image it's best to apply the sharpening to that size of image rather than resizing an already sharpened image. That is why I do the intermediate step of saving the TIF. After exporting to the full size I save a copy of that Photoshop file (a PSD file). Then I resize the image to the size I want (generally one where the longest side is at 2048 pixels for the best uploading to Facebook). 

After you resize you need to re-apply the sharpening plugin. It's probably best to completely delete the original sharpener layer and start over with it just to ensure it's working with the new image size. Once you've sharpened the new image size and exported it as a new JPEG, you're done! Again, here is the final version:

Luna the male Barn Owl
Final version

Some Photoshop CC Post-processing Notes - Part 1

I thought my post processing of this photo turned out pretty good so I thought I'd share what I did. 

Luna the male Barn Owl
Arizona's Raptor Experience

I am using Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography Plan (I also want to point out that I'm not affiliated with them or any other product that I mention, unless I explicitly mention it, and of which at this time there are none to mention). Since I installed the Google Nik Collection of processing plugins, I've mainly been using Photoshop and that's what I used for this image - Photoshop CC and various Nik plugins. 

First, I almost always shoot RAW, as I did for all of the images at this shoot. Without getting in to that discussion, the RAW format allows you a much greater latitude of adjustments in post processing. The first step in working with a RAW file is to import it using a RAW converter. I used the Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) converter for this file.

Adobe Camera Raw

I've created a few pre-sets in ACR, which are basically everything set at zero with these exceptions: 

• On the "Lens Corrections" tab, I check the "Enable Lens Profile Corrections" check box on the "Profile" sub-tab and the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" check box is checked on the "Color" sub-tab.
• On the "Camera Calibration" tab, I selected a few of the "Camera Profile" settings and saved each one as a different preset. I did this so I could go through them on the "Presets" tab.
• For my Vivid2 preset, on the "Basic" tab, I also set the White Balance to Daylight and on the "Tone Curve" tab I selected the "Medium Contrast" curve. I found that I used these settings often so saved them as a preset.

By having everything else at zero I know I'm starting with a clean slate.

Here's what the RAW file looks like as shot. This version has no processing other than converting to JPEG and re-sizing.

Straight Out Of Camera
(SOOC)

In Camera Raw I normally do some spot cleanup for dust spots but since this was shot at f/4 the dust spots weren't visible anyway. Nice!

I adjusted the shadows to bring up the wing but that's about it. I planned to do the initial shapening and noise reduction in Nik so left those tabs alone and opened the image as an object in Photoshop.

By opening the image as an object you can go back and adjust things in Camera Raw as well as the other adjustments I planned to make with the Nik plugins.

Nik Plugins

Following the Nik plugin suggested workflow, I planned to do the "pre-sharpening" with the Nik Sharpener Pro 3 Raw Presharpener. I'll have to admit that using the Nik plugins adds time to a workflow because it takes time to open them up. They have to convert the files to .TIFs to work with them and each plugin has to go through that process. On the positive side, for this plugin, you can more easily control what you want sharpened and what you don't. 

I didn't want to sharpen the sky or that background in the lower left. By using the control points I could apply the initial sharpening to my subject only and to not try to sharpen the blurred areas that I paid more for a lens that would try to blur things out in camera.

If you don't use the Nik plugin you should at least always use the "Masking" slider in Camera Raw or Lightroom to control where sharpening is applied by hitting the [Alt] key as you move the slider and adjusting it until only the desired edges are highlighted in white. This is a trick I only found out about in the last few months but it means you're NOT applying sharpening to the entire image but only the edges that need it.

Nik Dfine 2

Next I used the Nik Dfine 2 to do a slight bit of noise reduction. Similar to the pre-sharpener, you can use control points to control what you want noise reduction applied to. 

I've just recently (within the last few weeks) stopped worrying about noise reduction much but I still like to apply it to large areas of the same or similar color such as the sky. I used control points to prevent or reduce noise reduction on the owl but I did use it for the sky.

You can see that the owl is masked (black) which means that noise reduction is NOT being applied in those areas. Noise reduction works by blurring pixels. Even if it's slight, I don't want to blur the details on this subject with noise reduction. I didn't really see any noise on the owl anyway but by masking him I know that there won't be any blurring of the detail in his feathers due to the noise reduction.

Nik Color Efex Pro 4

Since I didn't feel I needed to adjust the general lighting much I didn't use Viveza 2 and instead went straight to Color Efex Pro 4. Note that Viveza 2 can also be used to add "structure" to an image, basically to bring out additional detail, in addition to allowing you to do lighting and color adjustments.

I also didn't feel the need to do a lot of color effects but I did some. I used the "Detail Extractor" filter to help bring out more detail in the feathers. I used the  "Polarization" filter to darken the sky a bit as well as to bring out the blue in the sky. This filter also provided a bit more contrast and saturation to the owl. Finally I used the "Darken / Lighten Center" filter to add a bit of a vignette, but I ended up doing even more directly in Photoshop later.

Those are the initial edits I did with the raw file and the Nik plugins. You can probably see in the image in the initial images that Luna has the leather "jesses" around his feet. My next step was to create a copy of the smart object and put it in to a new layer to begin working on that. You can't edit a smart object directly as far as using the healing brush.

Adobe Photoshop Clone and Heal

By clicking on the smart object layer and selecting everything ([CTRL] [A]) you can make a new copy by pasting the copied image ([CTRL] [V]). This will create a merged copy on top of the smart object which will allow cloning out items such as the jesses. Note that I took the time to re-label the new layer to "Merge & Cleanup".

After some time I got an acceptable removal of the jesses as shown below. I think it's okay - and I don't think most people are going to know what the legs truly look like without the jesses nor will they concentrate on that portion of the owl as much as his head. Here's a shot of Photoshop up to this point. I'll continue with the rest in the next post. 

Photoshop after the initial edits, merge, and cloning

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Google Nik Plugin Collection for Free!

If you've been doing photography post processing using Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop you're likely aware that you can use third party plugins (little software applications that run inside of another application), and if you've investigated them at all, you're probably aware of the Nik plugin collection. 

Google announced on 3/14/2016 that you could get the full Nik plugin collection for free (at: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/)! It had been offered at $149 for the package so that made a pretty good deal! Note that a company named Nik created the software. Google purchased Nik on approximately 9/17/2012.

Superstition Mountains, Apache Junction, Arizona
Processed with Adobe Photoshop and Nik Collection

I have been mostly offline for a good number of weeks due to illness. Nothing horrible but it kept me inactive (I've had a sinus problem since December and had to have surgery to clear it up). In my down time - time that I haven't really shot any photographs - I have downloaded the Nik collection and have been learning it.

Prior to installing the Nik collection, I was pointed to a couple of photography web sites and YouTube videos that I really enjoy. They were great to watch while laid up taking care of my sinus. First, I started watching videos from "The Slanted Lens"(https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSlantedLens).  I was searching for information on starting and running a photography business and found I enjoyed the sometimes quirky videos. They have a lot of information that seems to resonate with me and it's presented well in my opinion. I know that some people like different types of instructional videos but the ones I watched seemed like they were well thought out and presented by an adult. 

Yep, I am a grumpy curmudgeon but I don't think it's for no reason. I am not fond of the current trends of not providing help or information about a product, the poor grammar, or the overall lack of professionalism. The Slanted Lens videos I watched did NOT have those problems.

Further, Jay P. Morgan pointed me to another web site that I also highly recommend, "F Stoppers". I especially enjoyed the videos with Elia Locardi who's landscape photography resonates with me and is the kind of photography I'd like to achieve. I suggest watching the "Critique the Community" with Elia as well as the "Behind the Scenes" of the making of the Landscape and Cityscape tutorials that they offer. I haven't purchased them myself (they're $300 each) but I'm tempted to. 

I did find other videos offered by B&H Photography with Elia discussing post processing and that he, along with many others, like the Nik plugins for various editing functions over the standard Adobe functionality. I have heard about the plugins for some time and have been eyeing them but hadn't shelled out the money. When I heard they were free I couldn't wait to try them.

There are seven different plugins in the collection (you used to be able to purchase them separately): 

• Analog Efex Pro - various effects to simulate film
• Color Efex Pro - many various effects ranging from subtle to over the top
• Dfine - noise reduction that many photographers prefer over Adobe
• HDR Efex Pro - HDR processing of multiple or a single image
• Sharpener Pro - actually two different processors - a "RAW" sharpener and an output (e.g. Display/Monitor or Print) sharpener
• Silver Efex Pro - one of the most popular black and white conversion processors
• Viveza - targeted tone and exposure control 

The plugins all offer "control points" or "U Point" technology to allow you to control what part of an image is affected by a plugin. This is different than Adobe Photoshop where you control the affected area using masks which can be troublesome at times (like when selecting hair or trees). This same technology is in the Nikon Capture NX 2 software so I was already familiar with it and frankly, since I rarely use Capture NX 2 any longer, I've missed the "U Point" ease for controlling processing.

There are a lot of good videos on YouTube concerning using the collection, including videos put out by Nik itself (I'm not sure if they were done before Google bought them or after wards).

I find that they do offer a wider variety of processing than Lightroom. You might be able to do the same things in Photoshop but not as easily. I have used the plugins from both Adobe applications. I seem to prefer Photoshop because it seems more seamless, at least in operation. In Lightroom each time you open one of the plugins it generates a TIFF file to send to the plugin. When it does this you have options for the TIFF file, one of which is to set the resolution. I always set it to 300 DPI but it's not sticky so the next time I open a plugin I have to remember to set it back to 300 DPI. The Photoshop versions don't do this.

I too like the noise reduction on most of the images I've tried it on better than the Adobe version. It just seems better. And, you can target it if desired.

The HDR is great. I still wish you could do some things such as exclude an image from the stack without having to close the app and starting over. I use Photomatix too but I prefer the Nik tool. And you can use it to try to bring out detail in a single image (maybe Photomatix supports that but I've never tried it).

The Color Efex Pro is the biggie, though. You can modify your photograph in many different ways (there are 55 separate "filters") for simple correction and enhancement to very creative and distinctive processing.

I'm enjoying the presets and working with them to learn them. I'm not a huge Google fanboy but these plugins are great. The downside is that they're likely to not have any future updates or improvements but they do so much already that you can't easily do with the straight out of the box Adobe software that, for a while anyway, I'm very pleased and recommend getting them yourself!

The picture at the top of the page was processed using various Nik plugins.