As a long time member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, it was great to see the Editor’s top pick go out to one of my images! I attend Photoshop World each year, and continue to learn and execute the many techniques in this fast paced world of digital technology. This is where Nik Software comes into the picture!

Nik Software is about speed, consistency, quality, and mostly their vision!  Since my very beginning days of digital transition from film back in 2000, Nik Software has clearly lead the way for what we see in some of the world’s best photographic images today! I truly rely daily on Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 and Viveza 2 in my workflow to unleash my vision onto my photographic images. As a professional wedding photographer, I work on thousands of images and I require quick yet high quality results that I can duplicate over a series of images in my finished wedding albums.

The image shown below is a photo taken by window light in the bride’s hotel room, minutes after she was dressed. Once the raw file has been color corrected and converted, I then finished the final image in Photoshop using a variety of Nik filters including Color Efex Pro 4 Dynamic Skin Softener to smooth out her facial features, Brilliance and Warmth to add color to skin and background, Detail Extractor for the dress, wall and hair texture. Viveza 2 is used for selective darkness to finish my final image.

Here are the before and after images.

Photographs © Frank Salas