Nik Collection 2.5 Launched

Have you seen the news? There’s a new release of the Nik Collection. Much of the chatter is around the new film simulations in Color Efex Pro. In fact, I used one of these to process the image shown here.

Did this convince me to upgrade?

No, but I have upgraded. What convinced me was the improved compatibility with Affinity Photo 1.8. Viveza is now working correctly with 16-bit images and the horrible colour shift’s gone.

Viveza is a central plug-in to my workflow. The fact it didn’t work properly with Affinity Photo was a deal breaker for me. It prevented me from using Affinity Photo as much as I would like. I also found when using the Nik Collection with Affinity that some of the Plug-ins would vanish from time to time for no reason.

So far, everything appears to be working great and all the plug-ins displayed correctly in Affinity.

The upgrades also focussed my attention on the “Film Efex” filter in Color Efex Pro. This is a very useful filter and you can create some great results. I did cover it in my Color Efex Book but had forgotten how useful it was.

If you would like to know more about the Nik Collection 2.5 release see my review on Lenscraft.

Friday Image Details

The image I’ve shared is from Formby beach at sunset, shot a few weeks back. Formby is a great location for sunsets, even on cloudless days like this one. If you wait until after the sun has set below the horizon you often experience a wonderful afterglow of light.

I shot this image with my Fuji X-T3 and Fuji 16-80 lens set to 26mm. It was a 1/13” exposure at f/10 and ISO160 (base ISO). I also used a 3 stop Reverse ND Grad filter on the sky and had the camera mounted on a tripod. Whilst I could have used a hard grad on the sky, I found the reverse grad produced a nicer result when I tested it.

I hope you like the image and have a great weekend.