Cooking Up a Batch of Favorite Recipes with Color Efex Pro 4 by Brenda Tharp
One of the things I love about Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 is the ability to save my own recipes. I love to ‘cook up’ a look that I like, adding filters on top of each other, and when I get it to where I like it, I want to save that look to apply to future images that might be similar in style or subject matter. It’s a great way to jumpstart a body of work that has the same treatment, too!
After watching a few webinars from Nik, I learned that I actually like the Glamour Glow filter! At first I thought it would be for more advertising/fashion images, but with subtle adjustments, it added so much to this image of the bicycle against the wall. Combined with Pro Contrast and Brilliance & Warmth, I achieved a dreamy glow and rich textures and colors.
I used this same recipe again on a street scene from Burano, Italy.
© Brenda Tharp
And here is the image:
© Brenda Tharp
For this train engineer’s hands, I used a recipe of Tonal Contrast, and then Detail Extractor and Bleach Bypass, but applied that to just his hands to bring out the texture and gritty effect of them.
Here is the recipe:
And here is the image:
© Brenda Tharp
For this image of the old phone, I used Tonal Contrast and Bleach Bypass. I wanted a Sepia look but still in color, which the Bleach Bypass filter gave me, and the Tonal Contrast really brought out the wood grain.
Here is the recipe:
And the image:
© Brenda Tharp
When I create a recipe, I name it with abbreviated initials for each filter that I used, as much as I can, and even name it something like “ItalyBike”. That reminds me of the look it will give me when I’m looking at the list of recipes. I also keep a log of my recipes on my computer so I always have them with a reference photo to show me the look.
Thank you for sharing these recipes! Sometimes the amount of options with NIK can be overwhelming. It’s nice to how others are using it.
Hi Matt! You’re welcome!! I was off leading a tour in Italy and we just got back Sunday night late – didn’t have reliable internet in our hotels this time around, unfortunately so I’m behind on replying to emails. Glad you enjoyed the post.
Great info and insight. I have just discovered the recipe options and have begun experimenting myself.
I have some great shots from St. Johns and I’m going to try them out.
Thanks,
Scott
Thanks, Scott – start ‘cooking’ and you’ll be hooked like I am on building recipes that you like. It’s a great way to efficiently process a batch of images that you might like to apply the same treatment too.
Thanks for article. I have been using Colorefx Pro 4 and just start figuring out the receipe’s and they really do make a difference. Love the Colors in the Italy pictures.
You’re welcome Tom. Yes, recipes are terrific.The colors in the Italy pictures, well, in all the pictures, are essentially ‘real’. Maybe saturated a bit in the CEP process, but not too much to be unbelievable, just to bring the image back to what I remembered about the scenes.
Color Efex Pro is like my secret weapon when it comes to my photos. All my HDR images are not finished until I run Color Efex Pro on them. I like seeing how other people are cooking up recipes, thanks for sharing. I would love to see the before pictures in this article so we can see the changes your recipe made.
Hi Larry – thank you for your comments and yes, I agree, the before and afters would be a good idea to post. I’ll contact the administrator of the edu-blog at NIK (who is likely reading this note already!) and mention that for future postings by me or anyone. Thanks for reading it!
is perfect, beautiful look to be in accordance with the tools that really help the colors to be more perfect … congratulations on this good story. I became more obsessed Viewing his work is good for share
Thank you Meidy – and for sharing it too.
The images are lovely, Brenda! I’ve worked with Photoshop since Photoshop 5 (that’s version 5, not CS5!) and Nik filters since they came out. I must say that ColorEfex Pro 4 is the best edition yet for the variety of creative things one can do! Thank you for sharing your recipes for these images.
But there’s just one teensy problem with sharing recipes via screen captures…. The numeric settings on the “shadows” and “highlights” sliders don’t show!
Hmmm…yes, we’ll have to determine a way to remedy that problem with the numbers not showing on screen captures. Thank you for sharing that and also for reading the post! Glad you like CEP 4 as much as I do! Keep sharing your vision….Brenda.
Hello Brenda,
do you know how to export (on Mac) a previously saved recipe?
I need to export all my CEP 4 settings because I need to format my system…but i cannot find the way to do that
Hi Stefano,
It’s easy. If you go into CEP 4, select your custom (saved) recipes, and you’ll see an arrow in a box in upper right of each recipe listed there. you click on that and you can export the recipe – it will open a saving dialogue box so you can save where you want on the hard drive. Hope that helps!