Nik Software are certainly not newcomers to the market and have been around for over 15 years producing award winning plug-in products for digital photography and imaging professionals.

What I like most about Nik is the fact that their plugins are created for not only Photoshop but Lightroom and Aperture too.

We thought we’d give the 15 day trial a go….

Once you instal the plugin it’s very simple to navigate the user interface. You have a set of presets on your left and manual controls on your right.

The controls deal with brightness, contrast and Structure. To understand what ‘structure’ actually means or in fact does we’ve provided a little example for you…..

Structure minus 100 percent

Structure plus 100 percent

Here’s a look at the user interface itself…

One of the most powerful tools has to be the control points. This allows you to add specific adjustments to a particular elliptical area.

There’s also very simple colour filter adjustments which of course have slightly more intricate options if needed.

We also have the option of side by side comparison and split screen views. This is always a nice reference point to stop you taking things too far.

Some other features also include some pretty cool stylising tools including beautifully subtle toning, simple vignetting and edge burning. All equally effective and easy to use.

I must say that I’m not as convinced by the film type presets as they are a step too far for my personal tastes.

After we’ve made all of our changes we can of course mask the effects and paint them in very easily using the brush tools.

All in all it’s a great piece of software but at 200 EUR you’ve got to really do a lot of black and white images to warrant the outlay.

If drastic black and white landscapes are you thing then perhaps Silver Efex Pro might be worth putting on your Christmas list.