It’s best to apply borders only when you’ve settled on the final picture size and aspect ratio since you won’t be able to crop the picture later without losing some of the border. The Image Borders section has a range of plain, film like or rough edged print border effects which you can choose from the drop-down menu and adjust with the sliders. It’s not unlike using the graduated filters you get in some other programs. Burning the top edge is a great way to add a sky darkening effect, and burning the base is a great way to balance up the composition if you do. You can darken (burn) the top and bottom and left and right edges individually or all together. You can achieve more controlled and creative ‘dodging and burning’ using the Burn Edges section. Vignettes can effectively simulate the appearance of old lenses, negatives or prints. The Vignette panel offers a range of preset corner darkening or lightening effects, but you can also control these manually. You can also adjust the ‘paper hue’ and ‘silver hue’ separately to create split toning effects. The Toning section offers a large range of preset toning effects, from Sepia to Selenium and many more. There are lots of really good ways to create black and white images in all sorts of software, but even now Silver Efex Pro has a magic ‘x’ factor that makes it stand out. This is the last adjustments panel, but it covers a lot of things, not just the finishing touches. Silver Efex Pro is one of the best-known plug ins in the Nik Collection and widely regarded as the premier tools for fans of black and white photography.

Nik collection silver efex pro