My question may sound provocative, but I have always doubted the usefulness of Viveca. Except in the stand-alone version, Viveza makes little sense in my view. Everything that Viveca can do can also be achieved in the host program - in my case PhotoLab.
Is there anything that PhotoLab, Photoshop or Lightroom can’t do that I absolutely need Viveza for?
I’m looking forward to your opinions.
Manfred
Not that I have ever found. I stick with PhotoLab, FilmPack and ViewPoint all integrated and never leave PhotoLab apart from final print sizing and sharpening, for which I use Topaz Photo AI.
The Nik Collection is primarily intended for those using Adobe and other editors
I wouldn’t call the entire Nik Collection obsolete because of FP or VP (which I also have installed). There are some filters in Color Efex for example that I can’t recreate with FP. Furthermore, the possibilities in Silver Efex are almost limitless. What I personally definitely don’t need, however, is Viveza.
In other words, ready made presets. But the Nik Collection is only designed to work with bitmap files rather than RAW. So, you would have to convert the RAW in PhotoLab, RawPower or something similar before using them.
I would be so bold as to say, with persistence, there really isn’t much you couldn’t do with PL and FilmPack.
I do a lot of B&W work and could not find anything in SFX that I can’t do in PL+FP. Do you have an example of something that you couldn’t do without SFX, or are you talking about presets again?
No, I’m not talking about presets. I’m talking about filters such as Pro Contrast, Contrast Color Range or Tonal Contrast.
I know that Nik Collection does not work with RAWs. I use TIF as one of the last steps and see no problem working with it in this case.
The conversion of the format is done automatically using the plug-in selector with the values I set in advance.
I was already using Silver Efex when FP was not yet available. So I’m used to it. I believe that FP offers almost everything that Silver Efex can. But why should I change?
And finally, presets are sometimes helpful to get ideas. Why not?
@Klick I use Nik Collection as a plug-in in DxO PhotoLab and I find Viveza excellent for giving extra “pop” to photos. While much of what it can do is available in PhotoLab, the available degree or exact nature of the alterations can add to what PhotoLab can do. For instance, Microcontrast is roughly analogous with Structure in Viveza, but the latter is a more powerful tool, as is Contrast proper. Also, Viveza has very simple controls and I find it a good one-stop shop for upgrading photos. It’s also useful for preparing a colour image for processing by Silver Efex.
I’ve only just installed Nik 7 today and I understand that some of Viveza’s functionality is now duplicated in Color Efex so it will be interesting to see how much I still need it, but so far it’s been an important part of my workflow.
@freewheelingfrankie, thank you for your explanation and sorry for my late reply. I had problems with my computer.
What you say sounds interesting. Maybe I should take a closer look at Viveza after all. So far I haven’t really used it because I prefer editing in PL in RAW format rather than Tiff.