The Nik collection just got a new member. Analog Efex Pro.  This plug-in is meant to simulate the effects that you used to get with the older film cameras. The basic idea is that you pick a camera type over on the left and then adjust the settings over on the right. The camera types to pick from are Classic Camera, Wet Plate, Toy Camera, Vintage Camera and my favorite, the Camera kit where you can build your own camera.

Now, a lot of folks might think that this is just a gimmick and not part of their workflow since they don’t add a bunch of effects to their images. I don’t add a bunch of effects to most of my images.

But, hold on.. there are some really great tools in this software and I want to talk about two of them: Bokeh Ellipse and Lens Vignette.

Using the Camera Kit, I just checked the Bokeh Ellipse and Lens Vignette for this post so you can see exactly what they do and how powerful they are.

Here is the standard interface that you know and love from the rest of the Nik products. I have the main image in the middle with the two adjusts in my camera kit on the right. I select the Bokeh Ellipse tool and I have 4 controls right on the image.

1: This controls the center point of the Ellipse

2: This controls the inside edge where the Bokeh will begin.

3: The distance between point 2 and Point 3 controls the feathering of the effect and

4: Allows you to rotate the Ellipse.

Then you can adjust the about of the blur, boost the highlights and actually change the way the Bokeh looks by adjusting the aperture rotation and the aperture variation.

Once I have the Bokeh looking just the way I want, I turn off the effect and open the Lens Vignette tool. This allows me to add a vignette but instead of being restricted to the middle of the image, you can move the vignette around and change it from round to rectangle. Very useful when the subject isn’t in the middle of the frame. You can see here how I made the rectangle frame off to the left and more rectangle than round.

Add everything together and you get:

The whole process took less than a minute.

More to come