Using Nik Silver Efex on Color Images - with Color output!

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I discovered a new trick in Silver Efex (works both in the standalone app, as part of the Nik Collection, as well as in Photoshop via plug-in). This opens up some of the advanced tools like dynamic brightness, soft contrast, frequency separated structure adjustments, and repurposing favorite black and white presets for color purposes.

Note: This is not the same (!) as running SFX on a separate layer and setting blend mode to luminosity. In that case, colors get desaturated, which may or may not be desirable. My approach below preserves the full color 'pop' of your image.

First, here's a sample output as a teaser, using my own version of the SFX 020 Fine Art (high key) preset, in color, without a frame, dialed back to 50% opacity:

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How to:

The key is using the 'Selective Colorization' slider as part of a Selective Adjustment, like so:

1. Create a Control Line that affects the entire image
2. Set Color Sensitivity for Luminance and Chrominance to 0 to equally include all parts of the picture
3. Set Selective Colorization to 100%

Done! I recorded actions for some of my preferred conversions, running them on a duplicate layer to adjust opacity as a measure to control the strength of the effect.

Edited January 3, 2024 by mzbe

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[Ken Abrahams]

Kool I will check it out because the SFX really works for some of my themes. I know that program well but don't use the color efex or Analogue Efex programs. I'm not really a fan of colour saturations shifting by adding contrast but I like contrast. I don't mind altering hues for effect in most cases but not the red/yellow over contrast/saturation in faces.

Thanks