Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 Complete Control for Professional Quality Black and White, Windows and Mac Compatible

The Silver Efex Pro 2 Software from Nik Software is a powerful plug-in application for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture. It gives you all the tools necessary to convert color images from your digital camera to stunning black and white photographs. While many cameras offer built in support for shooting in black and white - and any image editing program worth its salt can perform a standard grayscale conversion - simply desaturating a color image can often produce a flat and boring black and white conversion.

Silver Efex Pro gives you the tools you need to bring life to your monochromatic visions. It can simulate several types of colored lens filters and can emulate many popular black and white film stocks - including popular films by Ilford and Kodak.

You'll also be able to add borders to your images - perfect for wedding shooters and fine art photographers alike. You can selectively restore color to an object, making it visually pop out of the rest of the image. Dynamic brightness and soft contrast adjustment allow you to perfect the look and feel of your images. Thanks to a powerful history browser you will be free to experiment with all the tools the software provides - there is no adjustment that you can make to an image that cannot be easily undone.

Silver Efex Pro 2 is compatible with the following host applications: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.x, Apple Aperture 2.1.4 and Apple Aperture 3.x.

Black and White Conversion: Whether you are a professional or a hobbyist yearning for those days in the darkroom, Silver Efex Pro 2 gives you all the power and control you need to create high quality black and white images

Great Beginnings: Start with dozens of visual presets as starting points. If you like what you see, you're done. If you want to go further, use an extensive set of global controls such as brightness, contrast, saturation, structure, film types, toning and much more to craft your image

Selective Editing and Finishing Touches: For the ultimate in selective enhancements, look no further than the revolutionary U Point technology for incredibly precise selections and adjustments. You can even use the Zone Map built into the software to help guide your edits

Looking to the Future: You'll discover that although black and white photography is nearly 200 years old, Silver Efex Pro 2 gives you the very best of that legacy in one easy-to-use tool, plus capabilities that make it possible to do more than ever before

U Point: For photographers, one of the most difficult aspects of image enhancement has been the ability to selectively edit areas of an image without affecting other areas. It's often easy to look at an image and determine specific things you want to fix, but frustrating to actually fix them

Easy Adjustments: Patented U Point technology makes it possible to create amazingly precise selections without time consuming and difficult tools, such as selections and layer masks

More than a Million Members: Debuting in 2006 as a key feature in the first release of Nikon's Capture NX photo editing software, U Point technology recently passed 1 million users. It is now found in 7 different imaging applications and has forever changed the way photographers edit photos

Advanced Controls: Achieve incredible results faster than ever with never-before-seen advancements in black and white controls such as Dynamic Brightness, Fine Structure, Soft Contrast, Amplify Whites, Amplify Blacks and the legendary Grain Engine

Advanced Intelligence: The imaging science and technology behind Silver Efex Pro 2 has been developed so that each part works intelligently together with others for the best results possible

Freedom to Experiment: The History Browser enables you to explore all of the features in Silver Efex Pro 2 with the freedom to try different looks, undo adjustments at any time and compare different edited history states of your image

Compare Enhancements: Using the unique History State Selector, you can compare the current enhancements to any other state in the History Browser

Unique Tool: Intelligently adjust brightness in your images using the Dynamic Brightness control. This unique tool adapts the brightness effect to existing tonalities in an image, creating spectacular results

Intelligent Brightness Adjustments: Dynamic Brightness ensures that different areas of your image receive different brightening adjustments, based on tonal values of each area. By moving one slider, dark areas get brighter all without affecting lighter objects in your image and vice-versa

Accentuate Your Images: Accentuate blacks and whites in your image for greater impact by increasing the presence of highlights and shadows adaptively throughout the image. Unique contrast effects are easily achieved without blocking up darker areas of an image or blowing out lighter ones

Enhance Image Detail: Typical contrast adjustments enhance lights and darks along edges. Introduced in the first version of Silver Efex Pro, the innovative Structure control works more precisely "between" the edges to enhance images, often working in concert with contrast

Simulate Film Grain: Film grain often sets the mood of an image. Silver Efex Pro 2 has an unparalleled grain reproduction algorithm that doesn't merely layer grain on an image but rather recreates the image using the grain settings you've chosen

Precise Control: Begin your exploration of grain by going directly to the Grain slider or by selecting a Film Type that will apply a grain setting appropriate for that film. Choose the number of grains per pixel and a desired level of grain softness

30 Built-In Presets: Achieve spectacular results with a collection of over 30 visual style presets categorized by photographic style and displayed using your current image. Presets provide a great starting point for your masterpiece, plus you can easily create your own and share them with others

One-Click Editing: The visual presets in Silver Efex Pro 2 offer a simple way to begin (or finish) your masterpiece using just one click

Logical Categories: View all of the visual presets or select just the ones you want based on the style of photography you do. If you're looking for more of a nostalgic feel, choose the Vintage category. If you like a more current look try the Modern category

Create & Share: Silver Efex Pro 2 encourages fun and experimentation, so why not share the experience? Once you have created a great black and white look, you can easily make a visual preset to use on other images or to share with others

Dynamic Contrast Adjustment: Conventional contrast darkens and lightens details in a very straightforward yet unsophisticated manner, often producing images that are harsher than intended

Redesigned Border Algorithms: Silver Efex Pro 2 contains an entirely rewritten set of intelligent algorithms that incorporate organic elements to create unique, natural and random image borders. This is a modern interpretation on classic darkroom borders and offers virtually infinite possibilities

Fully Customizable Borders: Photographers have often looked to digital photographic borders as the finishing touches to their masterpiece, yet have fallen short because many image borders are either too smooth, artificial, or they all have the same appearance

Darkroom Quality Processing: Finish your images with complete control over popular vignette styles and burned edges for a true darkroom result