Lightroom Plugin - Nik Collection or On1 Can it Help these photos?

[TheBigE]

Hello,

I posted this on another Forum, but though also there is some great experience here as well on Nik Collection or On1 for PP.

Recently, I just returned from Bastogne Belgium and saw the Bastogne War Mueseum and a few other sites in the area.

As usually happens the day was lackluster in terms of lighting - Dark Cloudy Skies and so forth. I tried to do my best to find interesting perspectives and angles outside, and working through high ISO situation inside the actual Museum.

In culling through my photos, I am seeing some that composition wise look good, but really lack some emphasis. I was thinking of trying an external photo suite/plugin in Lightroom - Either Nik Collection or On1 photo suite.

I have done some research and will likely give a trial a test on both programs. However, there are few points that I have concluded by going into this...

- I do not want to leave LR, I only want an interface within LR. I would like to start and finish in LR.
- In general I will jump over to PS for removing items in the photo, and playing around with Masks.
- I am reasonably comfortable with PS. I realize that many of these effects for these collections could be done in PS, but my problem is that I am not really sure "what" I want. I am confident that if I knew where I was going I could find my way...problem is I am not sure where I am going.
- I really struggle in using the adjustment brush in LR, and just cannot seem to achieve the impact I am looking for in these situations. In the photos below I might be able to use Adjustment brush in LR to help improve the photo, but my recent track record has not been successful.

Here are a few shots I am thinking might be improved using one of these suites. I could be wrong here, the lighting was not optimal and perhaps this cannot be remedied in PP. I welcome any thoughts and feedback you may have in this case.

The first couple, I was trying to get a feel for what it was like on the ground during the Battle of the Bulge. Yes no snow, but hoping to get a feel for lying there and really not knowing what is out there...

On the ground in Bastogne

The actual Memorial - some photos from different angles around the memorial.

Here is a few from the American Cemetery in Luxembourg

High ISO taken into B&W

Perhaps these above were lost when the shutter button was pressed...that also is welcome feedback.

Thanks.
Erik

 

[elmoandzoey]

I once tried On1 but never could get comfortable using with it. I have the Topaz collection as plug-in for LR. I love what you can do with it. The only gripe I have with Topaz is that there is a different program for pretty much every effect you want to use (e.g. clean-up is another program than noise reduction that color recomposition). I think all of them could benefit from a retouch in Topaz. I am not very familiar with the Nik plugins though.

 

[dmaxphil]

I have the Nik collection and mostly only use the Silver Efx plugin. They are all opened within LR. I also very rarely go outside of LR to PS. Nice set of images above by the way. What types of changes are you thinking?

 

[TheBigE]

Sorry for the delay, work got in the way. I downloaded NIK collections and played around a bit with ColorEfex. I guess some of my concerns is the photos are flat. Mainly the sky has no contrast and really takes back overall from the photo. We cannot all have perfect days right?

Here is a couple I have worked in NIK, ultimately I would like to be able to keep between LR and PS. The shear volume of choices in PS make it difficult to pick where to start...especially if you do not know your destination.

Detail and Extractor Filter applied in NIK

Adjustment only from LR

Same filters in NIK - Detail and Contrast - not perfect some "haloing"

LR Adjustments Only

 

[PrincessInOz]

You may already have caught up on the news....but Google just made Nik Collection free.

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/


And I'm curious about what adjustments you're making in LR. Have you tried applying the LR graduated filter on the sky?

 

[docwoodstock]

The NIK Collection is now available for free from google.....woot-woot.

It is an interesting group of plug-ins to experiment with, especially for free.