For a long time now I have been a user and enthusiast for Photoshop. I am however a strong advocate of making photography light weight in all respects and that includes post processing images. I don’t want to be sat behind a computer for hours on end when I could be out taking pictures. No, my life and time are far too valuable for that and this was one of the drivers for me switching to Lightroom. I had reasoned that Lightroom could give me similar results to Photoshop but perhaps, from everything I had read, much faster.
Well, Lightroom is faster, especially where you want to apply the same adjustments to a group of images. It also makes finding an image a breeze and I wouldn’t be without it now. It is not however a replacement for Photoshop and I find that images adjusted in Lightroom still need some extra “polishing” in Photoshop in order to reach their best. It’s not therefore the huge timesaver I had hoped for.
What has caught me completely unawares however is a Photoshop plug-in from Nik Software called Viveza. It’s a very simple application to use and is accessed from within Photoshop but also integrates with Lightroom. What this plug-in gives me is the ability to make key adjustments to my images whilst targeting specific areas. For example I can edit the blue in a sky whilst leaving the ground and clouds unchanged. Yes I could do this in Photoshop but it would take some delicate selections to ensure I did this with a seamless blend, all of which takes time. With Viveza it takes just minutes, looks completely natural and requires much less skill than with Photoshop.
Having now used Viveza for a couple of months through Lightroom I am finding I do less and less in Photoshop. In fact, it’s got to the stage now where I think I can achieve better results with Viveza than I can using Photoshop. My Photoshop skills, painfully built up over years, now seem largely obsolete.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Great shot !
I love Viveza and all the other filters from NIK.
Pleased you like the shot.
Yes the Nik filters are good aren’t them. After I got the Viveza filter free I purchased the complete set and use them all the time now.
I’m with you, Since Lightroom 4 I rarely use Photoshop except for pixel manipulation. I have access where I work to the Nik software, but haven’t broke down yet and plugged them in. It’s a matter of I want to “master” one application before “playing” with another toy.
Yes, I understand what you are saying. It pays to master each part of the workflow in turn without adding further complexity.
Nik simply rock
Yes Viveza is amazing. In theory, you can achieve similar results in Lightroom with the adjustment brushes, but that requires a more work, and I find it hard to make the edges of brushed-in areas look natural. I hope Google doesn’t mess it up (now that they acquired Nik).
Can you please tell me the best place to go to to learn how to use Viveza?
Best regards
Paul
Paul, there is a book on Amazon covering thr Nik plugins but I dont know how good it is. The nik website is quite good at explaining features but it wont tell you the best way to do things. If you can wait a few weeks i am hoping to complete a Kindle book which i will make available on Amazon.
Hi Robin,
Interesting article. I’ve been playing around with Lightroom recently and the one thing missing for me is the ability to do local tonal adjustments. I’ll take a look at this plug-in and see if it works for me. A pity this functionality isn’t built into LR, but I guess that would just torpedo sales of Photoshop!
Ed
Hi Ed
Pleased you liked the article. Yes, the adjustment brush is a bit of a blunt tool in lightroom and as much as i love lightroom it just doesnt start to compare with Viveza. Well worth taking a look now you have gone digital 😉
I must admit I hadn’t spotted the adjustment brush in LR! Looks like I still have a lot to learn about these new-fangled computers. 😀
Check out the series of my lightroom tutotials that ePHOTOzine published or you can download them as pdf files from the members area of my lenscraft site. Have fun.