The next series of images continues with the use of Nik Color Efex to improve the overall appearance of the original image. The first image is the original taken from the deck of the ship that was going to be cruising down the Yangtze River. Despite the bad weather, I wanted to capture the entry way to the dock which my sister-in-law and I traveled, with our luggage, at night, in the rain. Notice that there are no railings on the last two flights of stairs! The enhanced image does lighten it up a bit and makes the grass, what there is of it, greener. The water, while lighter, is still muddy, which is as it was.

The next set of photos is also at the dock in Chong Quing, only shot toward the foot of those stairs. Notice the plank from the stairs to the first barge. Nice! But, as you can tell from those nets, which we thought might be attached with thumb tacks, we were most likely safe from falling into that awful water! We laughed that night when we got to our cabin. After seeing this in the morning it wasn't quite that funny! :o) In any event, with the use of Nik Color Efex, I was able to 'warm' up the image with some red contrast after first using the lighten filter.

I used the Nik-Midnight Filters on The Great Wall for the final series of images. The first image is the original. This image was then converted to a 'midnight' image. On the last image I used the lighten filter and the other filters to make the center of the image lighter, and to create a hazy effect.

I can see some definite advantages to having these filters. I'll have to look into the prices. But first, I'm wondering how much of this can be done with the photo enhancement features within PSP7. And, I'll have to admit that with some of these filters I have seen effects that I've not found in PSP7. Given that I have about 50 floppys of mostly poor quality digital images I took in China, it might be worth it to me to be able to correct as many of them as possible with these filters.