It beats rivals such as Tiffen Dfx 3.0, OnOne Perfect Effects 3 and Alien Skin Exposure 3 in our books.Ĭolor Efex Pro 4 is expensive, but you get a huge range of effects, many with in-depth controls.

It's not cheap, but if you try out the fully-functional trial version, you'll soon find out why. And if you don't, you're missing out on one of the image-editing world's truly great filter collections. If you already use Color Efex Pro, version 4 is definitely worth the upgrade. Color Efex Pro always offered a large array of excellent photographic filter effects, but now it enables you to combine them quickly and in much more exciting ways than ever before. It's true that there have been only modest additions to the range of filters in this release, but the changes to the way the plug-in works, although less glamorous, are hugely significant. The ability to combine effects in this way greatly expands Color Efex's potential.

Not only that, you can save these combinations of effects as Recipes - Color Efex Pro comes with a selection of great-looking recipes to give you an idea of what this new feature can achieve. Now, though, you can combine any number of effects without leaving the application.

Previously, you could only apply one at a time - it would be applied in Photoshop as a new layer, complete with layer mask, but then you'd have to reopen Color Efex Pro to add another. The other big change to Color Efex Pro 4 is the ability to combine filter effects. You choose a preset you like, it's applied in the main window and you can then tweak the settings if you need to, or accept the effect as it is. One of Color Efex Pro's strong points has always been its ability to preview effects directly and simply, and version 4 takes this further by adding presets for each filter, which are accessed by clicking a button to the right of the filter's name.

Nik software 4