SILVER EFEX PRO 2 - I'M HAPPY AGAIN

If you are familiar with my website, you know my black & white gallery is not overflowing with images.  That's because I spend most of my time looking for vibrant, colorful landscapes.  For me, capturing a vibrant landscape requires several factors; great location, interesting subject, and good lighting.  But what do you do when you don't have the best lighting conditions?  For me, a black & white conversion can be a great option.

For years, I relied on Silver Efex Pro for my black & white images.  But when Nik was purchased by Google and the software became free, it was obvious the Nik collection could someday be unusable.  That time came for me about a year ago when I made a Mac system upgrade.  The Nik software got funky, unpredictable, and eventually unusable on my machine.

So when the word came out that Nik was being resurrected by ODx, I was thrilled.  Yes, I love the new b&w profiles in Lightroom, but I consider Silver Efex Pro to be my "go to" plug-in for b&w.

Last week, I bumped my head and had a "creative moment".  What if I experimented with the b&w profiles in Lightroom and combined them with my favorite presets in Silver Efex Pro.  After, looking at the image below, I think I have created a new workflow process for my b&w conversions.  This image was processed in Silver Efex Pro, brought back into Lightroom Classic CC, where I applied a b&w filter.  This is still not an image I would put on my wall, but it does hint at the potential.