
To the naked eye, the stones were bathed in a warm, reflected light, but the camera’s just picked up the strong contrast and left them in deep shadow. The sky and the silhouettes of the ruins were working beautifully, but there isn’t enough detail in the shadows in the original shot. I’m going to use it on this picture I took at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset. Its strength is its simplicity, and its power lies in the way you can use what look like simple tools in clever and subtle ways to achieve great results.

Often, though, you don’t want to apply any fancy effects to your photographs, you just want to make them the best they can be, and this is where I think Viveza 2 excels.

Nik viveza tutorials pro#
Viveza 2 really only does one thing, using the same control points found throughout the Google Nik Collection, and this is why it’s easily overlooked in favour of the powerful image effects in Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro or in the latest addition, Analog Efex Pro. In practice, these control points are a little less precisely defined than regular selections in a program like Photoshop, but that’s actually no bad thing, because they blend in with the surrounding areas more subtly, and you can use them in combination to achieve some elaborate and complex image adjustments. You place a control point where you want to make an adjustment, and the tones under the control point are then used to define the ‘mask’ used to limit the adjustments to that particular area.

Viveza 2 control points combine adjustments and masks all in one. Viveza 2 is designed to offer localised adjustments for your digital image using the ‘control point’ technology now found throughout the Nik Collection. Viveza 2 is part of the DxO Nik Collection, and I think it’s in danger of being overlooked in favour of the newer, flashier or more versatile plug-ins in the collection.
