oh... Im in love
never really tried any of it till yest and its a keeper !
best tool ever ! ! ! cut down my work flow time in half ... GREAT tools

Yeah, I picked up the Nik Software suite a few months back with a coupon for like $120 off or something like that. It was definitely worth it. Silver Efx is great. I use it for all my black and white conversions. It's so easy to use and it's so easy to get great results time and time again. It's a great plug-in for CS4 and I can't even consider going back to my old black and white workflow.

Willis - I can tell You that, once You start using Silver FX pro with Your RAW, than You will see the difference :), right now, when You use it with jpg's it's like putting michel schumacher into neon, go for RAW and You will see the difference. As for the software, for me it's the best and only professional B&W converter (period)

If you don't do a lot of it, it doesn't really justify the cost. I don't shoot raw, so I don't own capture NX (yes... I'll get there one day... when I can get over the extra storage space.

It's made by the same people, so I wouldn't be surprised if they shared some of the same tricks.

I use the B&W conversion in Capture NX to do the few B&W photos I have.

I'll post a full review when I get back from vacation, but let me drop a teaser by saying "Wow".

Previously, I'd done most of my black and white shots using some variation of desaturation. DON'T DO IT THAT WAY!. Ever since I switched from Mac to windows, I've lemented the loss of paint shop pro. PSP allowed me to make pretty decent looking B&W conversions, and the apply them in a batch process to all of my shots. There isn't really a cheap mac alternative that was getting me the same results

Even with PSP, I've always thought my Black & Whites lacked a certain something. Using this software, I'm able to get it in a few clicks. Kudos to NIK software on this one, I'm very pleased. I just might be breaking up with windows for good.