Miss just one blog post and you miss important stuff. 🙂 From “One Songbird Image; So Many Lessons:

NIK Tips

Once I had the dark feathers on their own layer I opened NIK Color Efex Pro. When the plug in opens you will see the selected area in a box that is smaller than the complete image but that includes stuff other than the selection. As you apply one or more filters will affect everything inside the box. No to worry; when you click OK and the image opens in Photoshop you can toggle the NIK layer on and off. You will see that the filters have been applied only to the selection. And that is just what you want.

For this image I ran Tonal Contrast at 70%. To reduce the effect of a given filter click on the words “Control Points” near the bottom of the Control Panel (on the right). An Opacity slider will open just below. Then adjust the Opacity slide to taste. To note the effect of an individual filter click the check box to the left of the name of the filter at the top of the control panel on and off.

To stack or add a second filter click on “+ Add Filter” at the bottom of the Control Panel. For the tree sparrow image I added Detail Extractor at 20%. It is very easy to over-do Detail Extractor.

As you practice feel free to experiment by adjusting the opacity of various filters and clicking the effects on and off to compare. In time you will become more comfortable and more confident when using NIK Color Efex Pro 4. And your images will begin to look better and better. (Note: the directions above my not make sense if you are using a version earlier than CE Pro 4.)

Was not difficult at all; I just left the single feather strand as is…..