New U Point Technology Much More Intuitive
Review by Erik Vlietinck
The new version of the Nik Collection contains a good deal of new features that will please many photographers. Viveza and Silver Efex have been revamped to a deep level. Both plug-ins now feature a modern interface that contrasts the one that you’ll find in the other plug-ins. The access to presets has been made more efficient, and creating and sharing presets has been made simple.
DxO takes U Point technology to its least-complicated implementation ever. You can now tune the mask with two Color Selectivity sliders. The new approach allows for time savings because you don’t need to create negative control points to keep the mask from bleeding into areas you don’t want to affect.
Another major novelty for all plug-ins in the Collection is that it’s possible to incorporate Control Points into personalized presets. It means, for example, that you can apply a color effect and a blurred background to several portraits simultaneously.
The Control Points themselves are now easier to use with only one slider on the HUD itself, making it easier to judge an effect. A boon is that you can rename them.
A new Meta Presets filter type has been added for Adobe Photoshop users. You access it from the Nik Selective Tool, and it contains Photoshop actions combining filters and settings of several Nik Collection plug-ins into one.
The Last Edit function now includes Adobe Lightroom Classic. In addition, the new Smart Copy & Paste feature lets users selectively re-apply the effect of a plug-in to one or several images directly in Lightroom without having to launch the software suite’s interface.
Finally, Nik Silver Efex now includes the ClearView technology that DxO PhotoLab users know when they want to remove haze and enhance local contrast. ■
