Top Six Photoshop Plugins Used In My WorkflowPosted by drfl on August 24th, 2009

1. Nik Viveza– Viveza contains a great interface for isolated brightness, contrast, and saturation control. This is by far my most used filter to complete some minor (or sometimes not so minor) adjustments to my image. Before Viveza I used masks and color ranges to accomplish these things, but now I found my workflow time has improved.
2. Nik SilverEfex – Black and white conversion program on NOS. This allows granular control on how the image is converted to monochrome and any film/style that may accompany this conversion.
3. Nik ColorEfex Pro – A collection of some good and some great treatments and effects. In version 2.0 I found myself overusing the Skylight filter, but now I use the effects sparingly or when I want to. My top three favorites within the collection?

• Tonal Contrast– For adjustments to local contrast for highlights, midtones, and shadow areas.
• Vignette (and Vignette Blur)– Two similar effects that produce a darkening or blurring effect on the edge of images.
• Graduated Neutral Density– To simulate the use of a grad filter on an image.

4. Genuine Fractals – The best program to enlarge photographs for bigger prints. Genuine Fractals extrapolates the information in the image and then uses that to intelligently place additional pixels to reduce the jaggies that can be produced when an image is enlarged.
5. Noise Ninja – The best program that I have found to reduce noise in photographs. I use this program sparingly, however, as I have found it can cause an unnatural look to some images.
6. Photomatix – A good program to create HDR images. This program can create some unusual (sometimes desired, sometimes not) looks to photographs.

With the photograph above I used a combination of these programs.  I began with Nik Viveza to slightly darken the background and add more brightness and contrast to the eyes and face.  I then processed the image through SilverEfex to convert it to black and white with a bit of tinting.  Lastly, I used ColorEfex to give the final image a bit of a vignette at the corners.