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[OM] Silver Efex Pro (was Great Idea - but not today)

Subject: [OM] Silver Efex Pro (was Great Idea - but not today)
From: "Piers Hemy" <piers@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 16:23:05 +0100
Assuming that you are between me and said bear, Bob, I will echo what yoy
say about SFX. I recently bought a copy of v1.0 at a price much more
palatable than full retail (with the option of a paid-for upgrade to v2.0),
and although I have hardly got my head around the auto-pilot modes, I am
mightily impressed indeed.  But documentation is sparse - especially as the
user manual is online, and for v2.0 :-(

Best write-up I have seen is 
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/plugins/silver_efex.html for v1.0
and
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/plugins/silver_efex_2.html for
v2.0

Piers


-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Whitmire [mailto:bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 10 May 2011 12:16
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] Great Idea - but not today

<Poking Caged Bear with Stick Alert!>

Now why would it matter, once you go high-end DSLR? All you need is a copy
of Nik Software's Silver Effex Pro v2 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 and you have
what you need to make genuinely cosmic black and white prints. Combine good
technique with the software with Epson's 3880 printer and Epson Exhibition
Fiber paper, and you can produce prints that are virtually (used advisedly)
indistinguishable from silver gelatin. Use some of the premium velvet and
watercolor matte papers, and, well, it's just pure magic. You'll even
acquire groupies. Trust me on this!

SFX is a fairly intuitive program, and the degree of control you have as a
photographer is light years (again, used advisedly) ahead of mixing
different batches of chemicals and waving your hands around under an
enlarger lamp. It's astonishing what you can do. That said, it requires some
fairly serious dedication of time and effort, just like a wet darkroom.
There is an auto-pilot, and it gives better results than you're likely to
get going the straight Photoshop B&W conversion, but once you start learning
what all those controls will do, you're ability to interpret your image goes
from, oh, say, a kit f/5.6-f/8 lens to the best f/1.2 prime.

Those who are happiest in the wet darkroom have no need to change. I salute
them and would not disparage them (except for AG, and that's just for sport
<g>). But for those who like or would like to like black and white and who
shoot digital exclusively, there's no need anymore to feel like you're Aunt
Sally's bastard love child. You, too, can do black and white, and you can do
it well. So well, in fact, that with enough practice, I suspect it would
take trained and experienced eyes to tell the difference between their
chemicals and your pixels. In a few more years, no one will be able to tell.

--B&W Bob

 
On May 9, 2011, at 5:48 PM, Ken Norton wrote:

> That's very specific to my DSLR
> needs and has no bearing on my dedication to the OM system which will 
> live on as long as I can get B&W film.

--
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