joelhaynes Loc: Bozeman, MT

95% of my processing is done in Aperture 3, with portrait shots taking a pass through Portrait Professional for some modest touch ups. Occasionally I will use Photoshop CS5 Extended for something that needs major surgery. That being said I am interested in what all of you Aperture/Lightroom users think about the benefits of NIK plugins. I am particularly interested in Viveza but the other members of the suite look interesting as well. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Thanks for you thoughts.

English_Wolf Loc: Near Pensacola, FL

Viveza uses control points to adjust a picture locally, from color cast to exposure to... You name it. This is a great technology that has been licensed to Nikon, under Capture NX#.

I have tried them and found them wanting, not because they do no work, they do, but because I am finicky and would have preferred for viveza to be a stand alone software.

Viveza otherwise put out good specialized products that by-pass a strong learning curve (as all effects can be duplicated but watch out for the learning curve, as mentioned).

The question is: Before you saw Viveza, did you need the tweaks shown? If not, save your money.

ziggykor Loc: East Texas

I use the siute in conjunction with Photoshop and have found that in most cases Viveza is the least used program. But, I do know people that swear by it. The problem as I see it is that most of my selections are not circles, and I seldom use the U-Point technology. But, I don't shoot portraits very often.

I,again personally, feel that Dfine, Color Efex Pro, Silver Exef Pro and Sharpener Pro are very good to excellent. The one thing that I've found with Color Efex that I seldom need to use more than two of the whole library of filters. Praobably this is simply a result of my workflow.

The reality is, all these tweaks can be done in most image editing programs, the plug-ins just save you time. But it can free you to do other things.

joelhaynes Loc: Bozeman, MT

That is what I am basically looking for. Quick, but effective functionality in the plugins that will be faster that what I can do in other programs. Speeding up the workflow AND being happy with the results.

English_Wolf Loc: Near Pensacola, FL

Tehn Viveza (or other plug-ins) is/are for you.

Just watch out the final price tag.

les_stockton Loc: Eastern Oklahoma

I've toyed with purchasing various packages from Nik over the past year. Ultimately, I purchased the complete collection because that price was a lot lower than purchase them individually, and I kept thinking that if I had the software, I would ultimately use them all.
I've had them for a week, with most of that time spent out of town on vacation. However, for what little time I've had to spend on them, I have used every one of them and am pleased. I'm still learning.
So far, I'd say that Viveza is the easiest to learn and the easiest to use. However, I've dabbled with Color Efex too and watched a bunch of youtube videos on it's use and I'm very anxious to see what I can do with that portion of Nik's software.