July 11, 2017 | 14372 Views | By Patrick Smith
Nik is Done – Matt Kloskowski's Guide for Switching to ON1
ON1 Guru Matt Kloskowski just released a new course for those left wondering what to do once their Nik Software stops working. The best part – the course is completely FREE!
To get this free course, just pop over to Matt’s website.
Here is a portion of the release from Matt’s recent post announcing the free course.
Last month I saw a ton of questions, Facebook®/Twitter® posts and just about everything else when Google®/Nik stopped working for some people. It seems there was a software update that broke it for some folks, but it also seems like there are some workarounds that will get it to work.
That said, the writing is on the wall and probably has been since Google made Nik free last year – Nik is unfortunately dead – Google even posted a message on the Nik home page that says it will no longer be updated (not even maintenance upgrades to make it work with Adobe®, Apple® or Windows®).
WHAT IS THE SURVIVAL GUIDE?
This course is meant to be something where Nik users can see what I switched to, and how it works similar to what you had with Nik – and how it’s different.
The course mainly covers Nik Color Efex Pro (which was the most popular plug-in Nik had) and how to get something similar in ON1 Effects. First I show you how the two are similar. How you launch ON1 (just like Nik), and how the Filters and Presets work similar to the way they work in Nik. Then I dive in to an overview cheat-sheet of sorts, that shows a Nik filter and what filters I think produce something close or similar in ON1 Effects.
Keep in mind, Nik CEP is old – like really old. So there are filters in there that just don’t make sense in today’s workflow. Things like Curves or Levels. If you even use Curves anymore (which most people don’t), that would be something you’d do in your raw editor of choice (I personally use Lightroom, but there’s a lot of others out there and ON1 even has their own raw editor).
Then I cover Silver Efex Pro and how to get something similar in ON1 Effects with their black & white conversion. I won’t get in to the debate of whether or not there’s anything comparable to Silver Efex, since that’s in the eye of the beholder. All I want to do is give you an option if you want to find an alternative to Nik, and show you what I personally use.
Finally, I briefly touch on Viveza, Analog Efex, Sharpener, and Dfine. I don’t spend much time on them because most people have a workflow in a raw editor, and all of these tasks should be done there (where you get better results anyway), rather than a plug-in.
Course Outline:
- Intro to why I’m doing this Course
- How to Launch ON1 Effects from Lightroom or Photoshop
- Using Color Efex Filters and ON1 Filters
- Using Color Efex Presets and ON1 Presets
- Five Things I Think You’ll Like Better In ON1 Effects
- Nik Color Effects Filters (A thru C)
- Nik Color Effects Filters (D thru G)
- Nik Color Effects Filters (H thru O)
- Nik Color Effects Filters (P filters)
- Nik Color Effects Filters (R thru W)
- Silver Effects and ON1 Black and Whites
- What about Viveza, Dfine, Sharpener and Analog Efex?
Make sure to go over to www.mattk.com and check out the full release about this new free course.
9 comments on “Nik is Done – Matt Kloskowski's Guide for Switching to ON1”
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On July 13, 2017 at 5:02 am marc labro wrote:
hallo,
on1 bw with gradients is very powerful.
However i still have difficuties to completely migrate from sep2 to on1 bw especially due to ZONE SYSTEM missing in on1.
seveal people voted for it but not enough aparently.
latest mat’s bw presets are amazing for still life.
it would be nice to add more for portrait, dramatic and soft.
recently there were bw tutos with some matte presets… very nice look.
wet rocks, high structure (smooth and strong) are still difficult to reproduce with on1.
i hope one day some companies (on1 ?) will purchase the right for u-points more easy to use than a brush.
marc
On July 31, 2017 at 8:16 am rudolf-steiner@mail707.com replied:
yes, the “u-points” are the big benefit of NIK, I want it on on1.
On July 15, 2017 at 4:19 pm llstudio2069@gmail.com wrote:
I LOVE the Zoning system in NIK! I hope ON1 get it!
On July 17, 2017 at 3:37 am marc labro wrote:
so, vote for it 🙂
it is a fantastic tool to check that a portrait face is in zone 6-7, a sky is even just by aigning two zones in same value, checking you have zones 1 to 9… on a cheap display.
many times i posted my bw images on forums and people told me the whites are not white enough,.. until i discovered zone system.
even if different we see that luminosity masks (the 17 ones in photoshop, not only one like on1) use a similar concept of splittig tones into zones to have best local adjustments.
marc
On July 17, 2017 at 3:48 am marc labro wrote:
just finished the survival guide.great job !
it was intersting to see the substitute filters but at same time to see how Mat use the on1 sliders.
My personal experience with Nik :
i have a D300 so I started with nx2 with color efex pro 3 (cep3) for nx2 and external sylver efex pro 2 (sep2) so i am a big fan of nik products an u-points but i agree that when i started to use nx2, lightroom version was 3 very weak compared to nx2+cep3 forlocal adjustments in non destructive way.
when lr4 and lr5 come, nx2 started to become a little old. cep4 came but not compatible with nx2. Problems start… so i switched to lightroom definitely with sylver efex pro2. never used viveza, dfine and sharpener. for noise i used imagenomic noisegrain or something like that and noise ninja. now i just use lightroom.
i wanted effects so i switched to on1 and i am very happy with this product especially since bw, color enhancer, vignette,… are stackable. perfect brush is powerful as well as all gradient type.
best regards
marc
On July 21, 2017 at 4:13 am Gene Herzberg wrote:
Does on1 provide b&w film simulation filters?
On August 2, 2017 at 2:43 pm Patrick Smith replied:
There are definitely quite a few built in to the app. You can get even more here that are free: https://www.on1.com/photo-presets/
On July 22, 2017 at 3:46 am Sandra Chung wrote:
I never used sharpener, I did have fun playing with Analog Efex. I did use Define (typically had to lower the opacity if the finished Define layer to about 50% as I found Define too aggressive and would smooth out details). I did use Viveza a lot. I don’t really think (this is just my opinion) that you showed what it could really for an image. I only used about half of the Color Efex 4 filters.
Silver EfexPro v1 and v2. This I used a lot. I found it, using the control points, the best way to fine tune B&W images.
That being typed: I have been working my way through ON1 Raw tools. Found your tutorial on which On1 Raw filters/presets were Nik equivalents or near enough, or how to get similar results. As I have found using graphics tablet and stylus the best way for me to apply the brushes for that fine tuning in On1 Raw.
I haven’t *quite* abandoned Nik plugins, as On1 only installs for Adobe Products, and there are more fish in the sea than Adobe. Would love to see On1 branch out to plugins for other photo editing software. Yes, I know, I can do the Raw edits in On1, save as JPG/TIFF etc, then open in *insert name of software here*… but would still be good to see this great product work with Corel or Affinity.
On July 29, 2017 at 8:40 am Steve Silverman wrote:
Curiously, no comment at all about HDR Efex Pro.