Posted on December 2, 2010
by Sam 
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It’s been almost a month since I returned from my trip through India and I’m still going through the many thousands of pictures. Every time I go past the many images I have of the Taj Mahal, I am amazed at the beauty of the building. This evening I thought I would see what I could do with Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro in converting one of the images to Black & White. The software gives some incredible control over the tonality and contrast of the image and it’s really simple to use too which makes it a pleasure. My one reservation with it is that once you have committed to the chosen edits, the conversion process is one-way, so you can’t go back and tweak your settings afterwards without starting from scratch. However, that’s generally not the end of the world. One thing converting to Black & White in this process does highlight though is sensor dust especially on clear areas such as the sky or still water. Fortunately my sensor wasn’t too bad, especially considering how dusty India is, so it didn’t take long to clean up.
5 Comments for Taj Mahal – Black & White
Sam Chadwick
@Tony – thank you very much for your comment. I'll give that a try.
Tony Pond
It's an extra step going into PS rather than using the plugin directly from LR but the ability to re-edit is worth it. Good luck.
Sam Chadwick
@Tony. I happened to stumble across a Nik training video on editing using Smart Objects. Link here for anyone else reading this post.
http://niktrainingvideos.com/video/sep/SEP_Smart_Filter/SEP_Smart_Filter.html
Sam Chadwick
In fact, Nik Software announced SilverEfex Pro 2 today which includes a history palette – so problem now solved.
Sam, I've been using Nik Silver Efex Pro for some of my black & white conversions, at first as a plugin for Lightroom. But to be able to go back and re-edit I've been using the program in Photoshop CS4 as a smart filter after duplicating the background layer. That way I can reopen SEP on an image and make any changes I want, which will be saved back to my Lightroom catalog. BTW, I found your work and site thru the Travel Photographer blog yesterday, Dec 15.