Nature's Light Photography Tours and Workshops
  • Home
  • Photography Courses
    • Mini Courses & Classes
    • Photography Mentoring
  • Photography Tours & Workshops
    • South Africa >
      • 4 day Swartberg Mountain Retreat
      • 5 day The Waves of Luphathana
      • 9 day Wandering the Wild Coast - South Africa
      • Drakensberg >
        • 5 day Hunters of Light Mountain Landscape Photography - Drakensberg Mountains
        • 5 day Mountain Adventure - Drakensberg Mountains
    • Africa Workshops >
      • Uganda Private Wildlife Photography workshop
      • Morocco - Meandering Morocco - 10 Nights
      • Botswana - Photographing Giants - Botswana 5 night astrophotography workshop
      • Lesotho - Expoloring The Mountain Kingdom - 6 night Landscape Workshop
      • Namibia - Namibia's North - 13 Nights
      • Namibia - Composing the Dunes - 14 Days
      • Madagascar - Exploring the Island Continent - 15 Days
    • Europe & the North >
      • 6 day Chasing Reindeer - An Ethnographic Photography Workshop
      • Chasing Auroras - Iceland Late Winter
    • The 'Where To Next' Survey
  • About Us
    • About Nature's Light
    • Photography Instructors
    • The Workshop Experience
    • Photography Tours and Workshops Calendar
    • Contact
    • Payment - Ts & Cs
    • FAQ
  • Gear Sales
    • Leofoto
    • Leofoto Flagship Tripods
    • Leofoto Accessories
    • Leofoto Mini Tripod & Smartphone
    • Leofoto Monopods
    • Leofoto Quick Release Plates
    • Leofoto Ranger Tripods
    • Leofoto Leveling Ranger Tripods
    • Leofoto SOAR/PRS
    • Leofoto Summit Tripods
    • Leofoto Tripod Heads
    • NiSi
    • NiSi JetMag Filter system
    • NiSi 100mm
    • NiSi 150mm
    • NiSi M75
    • NiSi SWIFT Filter system
    • NiSi Circular Filters
    • NiSi Close Up Lens Kit NC 77mm
    • NiSi Drone Filters
    • F-Stop Questionnaire
  • Blog
  • NiSi SWIFT Filters

BLOG








Nik Efex and the Power of U-point

11/28/2019

0 Comments

 
Lupine flowers on the side of the road in Iceland
Nik, as an application, has been around since 2000 when it was was first incorporated into Nikon’s RAW software called Capture NX2. What made the software special was something called U-point technology. In a rather trite naming convention, it is supposed to refer to the fact that '‘you point somewhere, and it works'’. Yet, this is pretty much how U-point does work. Nils Kokemohr (founder and CTO of Nik Software), managed to create an application that looks at luminosity, colour and tone as a way of selecting an area for image editing. To this day, it is one of the most intuitive and effective ways to select localised areas in an image for colour editing. At any rate, Nik’s intellectual property has passed through several hands from Nikon, to their own, to Google and thence to DxO. In a nutshell, the selection tool that was first introduced in 2000 is still going strong, yet there are photographers who still aren’t aware of it’s power and how to use it effectively.

I am going to look at just one app that comes with the Nik Efex suite that is in it’s second DxO iteration as of June this year (2019) – (you can read about whether the upgrade is necessary on this page); Nik Color Efex 4.

Picture
The original unedited image of the lupin flowers. the light was rather flat, but it was still a worthwhile scene to photograph
Workflow with an image

To start with I try to look at the image I am wanting to edit and decide what aspects of the image need to be adjusted. It’s fine working by feel as you go, but I personally find that the best results come from planning the workflow ahead in much the same way that we used to work in the darkroom from a contact print and then a working print of instructions. I try to do this regardless of the software I’m likely to use. It just needs an overall idea from which to approach the image. In this case I would like to lift the tonal values of the field of lupine flowers, while bringing in contrast and detail to the mountains behind. The RAW file itself came out rather flat, whereas my experience of the green saplings poking though the lupines was they felt more luminously green, so I also want to lighten the green leaves of these trees.

Picture
In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of Nik Color Efex (in particular) I open the file directly from Capture One Pro - without doing any edits - into Nik Color Efex 4. The first step is to lighten the lupine field while retaining the tonal value of the rear mountains. Using the Tone Curve I brought up the tonal values around the lupine flowers. This also affects the mountain though, so I need to select just the flowers.

Picture
Picture
The final mask for the first filter so that only the field of lupine flowers is selected


This is where the versatility of the u-point selection tool comes into play. With the tone curve set, click on the add ‘u-point’ button. Once selected, clicking on a point in the image then applies the filter to the area that has been selected by the u-point. The u-point itself looks for a combination of colour, luminosity and contrast to make a selection. You can see the selection itself by clicking on the ‘view mask' button. You can refine the selected area by adding multiple u-points across the frame, changing the size of each individual point, and by adding a negative u-point that subtracts from the mask. The example below demonstrates how accurate the u-point selection tool can be.

Picture
An example of how accurate the u-points are in selecting an object for colour grading.
Picture
Picture
For the initial tone curve bump to the lupine field I used several u-points (additive and subtractive) so as to essentially exclude the mountains from the mask. The second Layers and Curves filter was then applied in much the same way to the mountains, while the third was more specific to the green sapling that I wanted to brighten slightly.
Picture
After the trees were lightened slightly I added another Detail Extractor filter. This was used to select the mountain range in particular and bring out the texture of the rock face. Again, the u-points allowed selection of just the mountain face.
Picture
A final filter was to add a last touch of the Pro Contrast filter before saving the image. If you are working our of Photoshop using Nik Efex as a plugin, the image pops back into Photoshop as a new layer (meaning further masking is possible). This is my preferred way of working with Nik filters, but it is also possible to simply round-trip between your usual RAW editor (in my case Capture One Pro) and Nik Efex (or any of the other filters. 

Conclusion

The Nik Efex suite has gone through several iterations and there is definite competition in the likes of On One and Luminar software. For ease of use, functionality and the u-point selection tool itself, the Nik Efex filters are still a go-to tool for my work. Admittedly I don't usually work the entire image in Nik, choosing rather to work on an image in Photoshop or Capture One and then finishing it off in Nik.

There's a lot of bumpf in the filters that get offered in the various apps as well. As it is, Nik Color Efex 4 which is to me a fantastic finishing tool can essentially be stripped down to around 10 filters. The rest are for the heavy filter users (think weird colours on Instagram). But the suite also includes fanastic apps like Siver Efex Pro which also uses u-point technology.

Finally, for someone starting out in post-production, the u-points available in Nik Efex (and now DxO PhotoLab) make selections intuitive and simple. Yes, ultimately photographers will find careful use of luminosity masking more accurate, but significantly more difficult to grasp, let alone master. Until that becomes an option on the learning path though, u-points get the photographer 99% of the way there.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Nature's Light
    Dedicated Photographic Tours and Workshops Internationally and in Southern Africa

    Archives

    August 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    February 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    July 2023
    December 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Actions
    Adobe
    Autofocus
    Capture One Pro
    Curves
    DAM
    Digital Asset Management
    Editing
    Equipment
    Iceland
    Keywording
    Leofoto
    Lightroom
    Macro
    Madagascar
    Namibia
    Nik Efex
    Norway
    People
    Photographic Technique
    Photography
    Photoshop
    Portrait Photography
    Post Production
    Post-Production
    Renaming
    Shortcuts
    South Africa
    Travel
    Tripod
    Tutorials
    Workflow
    Workshop

Services

Short Courses
Landscape Photography Workshops
Wildlife Photography Workshops

Company

About
The Company
The Instructors

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms & Conditions
Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • Photography Courses
    • Mini Courses & Classes
    • Photography Mentoring
  • Photography Tours & Workshops
    • South Africa >
      • 4 day Swartberg Mountain Retreat
      • 5 day The Waves of Luphathana
      • 9 day Wandering the Wild Coast - South Africa
      • Drakensberg >
        • 5 day Hunters of Light Mountain Landscape Photography - Drakensberg Mountains
        • 5 day Mountain Adventure - Drakensberg Mountains
    • Africa Workshops >
      • Uganda Private Wildlife Photography workshop
      • Morocco - Meandering Morocco - 10 Nights
      • Botswana - Photographing Giants - Botswana 5 night astrophotography workshop
      • Lesotho - Expoloring The Mountain Kingdom - 6 night Landscape Workshop
      • Namibia - Namibia's North - 13 Nights
      • Namibia - Composing the Dunes - 14 Days
      • Madagascar - Exploring the Island Continent - 15 Days
    • Europe & the North >
      • 6 day Chasing Reindeer - An Ethnographic Photography Workshop
      • Chasing Auroras - Iceland Late Winter
    • The 'Where To Next' Survey
  • About Us
    • About Nature's Light
    • Photography Instructors
    • The Workshop Experience
    • Photography Tours and Workshops Calendar
    • Contact
    • Payment - Ts & Cs
    • FAQ
  • Gear Sales
    • Leofoto
    • Leofoto Flagship Tripods
    • Leofoto Accessories
    • Leofoto Mini Tripod & Smartphone
    • Leofoto Monopods
    • Leofoto Quick Release Plates
    • Leofoto Ranger Tripods
    • Leofoto Leveling Ranger Tripods
    • Leofoto SOAR/PRS
    • Leofoto Summit Tripods
    • Leofoto Tripod Heads
    • NiSi
    • NiSi JetMag Filter system
    • NiSi 100mm
    • NiSi 150mm
    • NiSi M75
    • NiSi SWIFT Filter system
    • NiSi Circular Filters
    • NiSi Close Up Lens Kit NC 77mm
    • NiSi Drone Filters
    • F-Stop Questionnaire
  • Blog
  • NiSi SWIFT Filters