The process of converting a color image to black-and-white seems at first blush to have very little complexity; just turn saturation to zero, right? However, one look at Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro and you begin to realize how many considerations can go into the conversion process and how dramatically those considerations can affect the final image. Thankfully, Nik has put clear thought into making those choices available while not overwhelming.

My investigation of Silver Efex Pro was with the Lightroom version. The plugin runs as a standalone application, but works seamlessly with Lightroom, conveniently creating a duplicate of the image (if you so choose) and stacking it with the original. From there you are taken to the main Silver Efex interface.

One of the first ways that Silver Efex simplifies the conversion process is by providing (by default and download) a set of Presets. Presets are much like Lightroom presets in that they do not alter the image themself, but apply a set of parameters to the settings that are applied to the image. So if you select one of the Presets on the left side of the screen, the settings on the right side change correspondingly. This turns out to be very powerful as a way to get a quick head start on look and feel, from which you can start tweaking the details. For this investigation, I selected the Holga preset, which applies settings that mimic the effect of an old style Holga camera.

As you may notice, selecting the Holga preset altered the Brightness, Contrast and Structure settings. While Brightness and Contrast are fairly self explanatory, the Structure setting is a local contrast setting which acts to effectively localy sharpen and provide detail.

Another flexible tool in the toolbox is the availability of Control Points. These allow the placement of localized adjustments to the three BCS settings. In the image above I felt that the dancer's face was overly bright so placing a Control Point in the middle of her face and sizing the control region to that area allowed me to lower the brightness and adjust the contrast to effectively balance with the vignette that was also applied as part of the Holga preset.

As mentioned, Silver Efex also allows you to add Vignette and other effects to the image such as grain. In the case of the vignette on this image, I felt that it was cutting into the dancer's close hand, which was easily changed by using the vignette's center point adjustment.

Speaking of effects, the Grain engine in Silver Efex is particularly good. Rather than just looking like random noise as many such engines do, Silver Efex renders grain in a way to take account of the exposure of the image. Likewise, the user is able to select particular films that have been modeled for their unique look and feel.

An interesting feature (although not often used these days) is the Zones bar at the bottom of the toolbox. This allow the user to identify areas of the image that match particular zones in the Zone exposure system.

After having used several different tools to perform black-and-white conversions, I have to say that Nik's Silver Efex Pro is one of the most full featured, yet easy to use options available. Every effort has been made to make the fine tuning options available and easily accessed, but out of the way for the 80% of the time that you don't need them.

Saturation zero is a thing of the past.

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