CCC Forum

Another long exposure effort here, this time for a manmade forest/loch near where we were staying in Glencoe.

I've shown the original colour version (with colour cast from the welding glass removed) and an initial mono conversion but I'm still not sure about either yet. I'd be very interested to see what silver efex pro could make of it if you get 5 mins to kick out an example too Mike

I'm quite tempted to download SEP2 and probably a LR5 trial sometime soon as well. Does the SEP2 plugin work for both?

The only processing is what I can manage at work so there's still a vignette I need to remove too.

Colour -

Mono -

davidc wrote:
I've shown the original colour version (with colour cast from the welding glass removed) and an initial mono conversion but I'm still not sure about either yet. I'd be very interested to see what silver efex pro could make of it if you get 5 mins to kick out an example too Mike

Here you go. SEP2 offers a number of options and I have used one of my own custom presets which seemed to work best. As you can see, it has brought out some detail in the sky. This is the low res version for posting on the forum. I'll e-mail you the full size image.

davidc wrote:I'm quite tempted to download SEP2 and probably a LR5 trial sometime soon as well. Does the SEP2 plugin work for both?

I definitely think that SEP2 is the best mono conversion tool out there, so I would recommend downloading the trial version. These days it comes bundled with a host of other tools, but of these SEP2 is the one I use most, even for my colour work! It is a plug-in which is compatible with Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop CS and Elements.

Thanks, it has definitely improved the image.

I've tried downloading trials of SEP2 and LR5... except for some reason Adobe's hopeless website simply won't let me do it and gets stuck in an infinite loop of "download it here > download fails, try here > download it here". Frustrating.

Whatever hissy fit the adobe site was having seems to be fixed though the download speed is excrutiatingly painful :/

Now SEP2 doesn't seem to be cooperating! I've installed LR5 and SEP2 but SEP2 is not appearing in the plugin manager and in the file structure of windows it's not got a folder named ".lrplugin" either. Google isn't helping, all the advice pertains to LR2.

I can launch SEP2 in a "standalone" fashion but it doesn't have an image loaded.

Frustrating

I think I've figured it out. Not very elegant, I thought I'd be able to access sep2 presets in LR5 but instead it opens in a whole new application.

Ah well, let's see what I get.

davidc wrote:I think I've figured it out. Not very elegant, I thought I'd be able to access sep2 presets in LR5 but instead it opens in a whole new application.

Ah well, let's see what I get.

That's the way SEP2 works. LR processes the Raw file and creates a new file, which SEP2 can then manipulate. It is a very powerful application which has its own range of controls which are different to LR, so it needs to open with its own interface. It is not like some mono conversion offerings which are basically a set of customised LR presets. So not inelegant, rather there is no other option to get the full benefits of SEP2.

Hmm I still expected a more complete integration. Also, I couldn't (at an admittedly quick glance) see any controls in SEP2 that weren't in PS or LR? Granted my LR knowledge is limited.

I actually thought it exactly WAS a series of presets

Anyway, after getting it up and running and clicking on one of the presets (;)) this is the outcome -


Glencoe Lochan - 228/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

It's going to take a lot of effort to learn how to adapt to LR's interface to acheive what I do on my already established workflow. Also, I am finding the output files from LR/SEP (not sure which) are of lower resolution/file size than via other tools. Some images are coming out incredibly blocky

davidc wrote:Hmm I still expected a more complete integration. Also, I couldn't (at an admittedly quick glance) see any controls in SEP2 that weren't in PS or LR? Granted my LR knowledge is limited.

Eh? You have looked at the right hand side of the SEP interface and seen the all the controls there? You will need to click the arrow in front of the tools to display all the functions available. In particular, Dynamic Brightness, Soft Contrast, the Structure controls and Tonality Protection I have not seen anywhere else other than in the Google/Nik products. If you can think of a way that SEP2's additional functionality can be built into Lightroom without needing a separate interface, I am sure Google et al would love to know.

davidc wrote:Anyway, after getting it up and running and clicking on one of the presets (;)) this is the outcome -


Glencoe Lochan - 228/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Looks like a good result. I find the High Structure presets, especially the harsh option, the most useful. I have my own set of presets, but I find that High Structure (harsh) usually works well and often does not need any further adjustment.

davidc wrote:It's going to take a lot of effort to learn how to adapt to LR's interface to acheive what I do on my already established workflow. Also, I am finding the output files from LR/SEP (not sure which) are of lower resolution/file size than via other tools. Some images are coming out incredibly blocky

I suspect it is a case of not being familiar with the products and some practice with them will repay itself. For me, LR5>PS CC>SEP2 is a very natural way of working. There is a lot of help on the Internet freely available for Lightroom and Google has a very extensive Help section for SEP2.

http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/en/index.html

Are you starting with Raw files when processing images in SEP2/LR? If you start with a lo-res JPEG, the SEP2 structure commands can cause the blocky effect you describe and I found this happening with the Glencoe Lochan image you posted on this thread.

Are you starting with Raw files when processing images in SEP2/LR? If you start with a lo-res JPEG, the SEP2 structure commands can cause the blocky effect you describe and I found this happening with the Glencoe Lochan image you posted on this thread.

Yes, always starting with full res RAW files. The normal workflow has been either -

HDR
Review candidates in Bridge > Photomatix for RAW conversion & HDRification > PS for tidying up (often just Imagenomic noise reduction and sharpening)

Normal
Review in Bridge > ACR tweakage > PS for tidying up

I'm wondering if I can ditch bridge (it's a bit clunky) and leverage the cataloguing tools from LR so I can just move to LR > PS