For a very long time, I’ve been somewhat dissatisfied with my digital black and white photos. They never had the tonality I could expect from a negative scan or a print. I asked someone on flickr, who had a tonality in his digital B&W images that I wished to achieve. He pointed me towards Capture One and DxO’s Silver Efex Plus 2 (in fact the whole DxO package). I’m not sure if Capture One and I agree with each other, more experimenting is needed. The DxO package though, is bloody brilliant. All of a sudden, I’m starting to get tonality I’m happier with.
It’s not just that though. I actually enjoy using the DxO plugin/software. And not just for B&W. There are plenty of ways of playing with colour too!
That said, I think Exposure X5 still has a place in my workflow. It’s fine for initial RAW processing and quick edits.
All of these shots were from this morning’s dog walk.
Anyway, today’s photo editing music is provided by Fatboy. What a find on spotify!
Up Close And Personal 
Your first two shots look great! I’ve never tried DxO, a long time creature of habit with Photoshop, but after reading your post, I might give it a try. Cheers.
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Thank you very much 🙂 Likewise, I tend to get stuck in my own habits, until I can see something is doing what I want, but better! It’s actually the Nik collection from DxO I’m using. I’ve not tried the DxO software itself.
One niggle I’ve found is that I have to start PS up, close it, then start it up again, to get the Nik collection window to open when I open an image. Not a huge problem though.
Again, thanks for the comment 🙂
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No worries, I was keen to try Topaz AI software but my old first gen i7 PC lacks minimum specs. DxO should work though. I have the last non-subscription Photoshop 🙂
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