Using Nik Collection’s Dfine 2

In my previous post, I relayed the news that Google had made the popular Photoshop plug-in, Nik Collection suite, available as a free download. I took them up on their offer, and have been exploring some of its modules. In this post I want to highlight the Dfine 2 noise removal component.

I started with an under exposed RAW photo taken at night. I had my camera set on an ISO of 16,000, but even then I had to bring up the exposure in the Adobe Camera RAW editor. I then opened the image in Photoshop Elements 14. The Nik Collection works nicely with PSE. You access the various modules using the Filter menu in the Expert mode of Elements.

The only processing I did within the Editor was to apply the Dfine 2 using its default Automatic Profile settings. The results are shown below  at 100%.

I may have been able to get similar results using the Noise Reduction Filter in PSE 14, but I know from experience, it would have been much more work. I am also pretty sure that tweaking the settings of Dfine 2 would have also produced better results.

Have any of you tried the Nik package yet? What do you think? I’ll report back on other  modules in the suite as I further explore them. Stay tuned.

Download Nik Collection Software From Google For Free

You may have seen this announcement elsewhere, but just in case you haven’t, Google is providing the complete Nik Collection of plug-ins as a free download.

For those of you not familiar with the Nik Collection, it is a suite of several plug-ins that integrate with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom that adds a variety of effects and advanced settings for enhancing your images.

These tools include:

• Color Efex Pro
• Analog Efex Pro
• Silver Efex Pro
•  Viveza
• HDR Efex Pro
• Sharpener Pro
• Dfine

You can find out much more about the plug-ins and download the complete suite from the link below.

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

You really should take advantage of this opportunity. Up until this announcement, the software package  sold for about $150, and was one of the most popular packages of its kind.

I will have more to say about the Nik Collection in future posts.

 

How to do a Full Backup in Photoshop Elements 14

In watching the video in my previous post, I was struck by just how poor the video quality was. However, it still has some value, since it covers the Restore command as well.

I decided to redo the video using the Backup command in Photoshop Elements 14. To keep the length of the video down, I only demonstrate the Backup command. I will address the Restore command in a future video.