Photography Videography Moregraphy

There´s something I´d like to share with you I find somehow useful and interesting if you like editing photos and pictures. Ever heard of NIK software? it´s a box of more less useful tools from Nikon (I guess) for use in editing software like Capture NX, Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop or, if you are lucky and rich, also for Mac:-) I shot this photo this morning with Nikon D200 and Sigma 50-150 (no vibration control so be careful with that) - Thanks for borrowing to Kanyapi and Petr;)



It is the Spolana Factory in Neratovice in Czech Republic. Let´s say it is NOT a heartbreaking nuts-off-taking photo, but for a quick NIK software demonstration ok.... As you can see the photo is very flat. I´ve used the Viveza 2 tool to bring some more contrast and structure. The great thing is, that you can pick any place in the picture, put there the so called "control point" and play with a few sliders to get the results you want. So that´s what I did and it looks like this



Much better to me. I´ve got a lot of noise and as you can see, either the camera or the lens is not very clean;) because there´s a lot of dust spots on the photo, I´ll take care about it later... Now. Looks much better but the picture is too yellow and red for my taste, too warm, So next thing I´ve used is the Color Efex 3 software and the Briliance/Warmth tool. I´ve added 67% to Brilliance and taken the Warmth down to 0.



OK much better. Next thing, the dust spots, that´s what you can take care off in any favorite software of yours, I am trying to learn how to use photoshop now so I´ve used the Spot Healing Brush (not sure about the english translation). Then I´ve used the Viveza 2 again to increase the amount of blue color and reduce the Warmth slightly.



OK. I have decided to leave some dust and noise to keep the sort of old film look... Again, not a very good photo, nothing special. Don´t forget that no software is going to turn bad photo into great one (you can try for yourself) but the possibilities how to edit and play with different tools are almost infinite, so go ahead, have fun!

One more thing, If you´re already using photoshop, the good thing is, that all NIK software changes will be shown as separate layers so you can edit or delete any of them anytime:-) There´s much more tools and software from NIK Software to use, maybe I´ll convince myself to write some more about it later;)

you can buy or download the trial versions of NIK Software here:
LINK TO NIK SOFTWARE

thanks for reading

Video was shot during few days with Nikon D60 and 18-105mm lens in Lisbon, Portugal 2010. This is my first stop motion video I made.

Lisbon is a city of lanterns... and graffiti..