best B&W plugin

[LeWhite]

Best B&W plugin. I currently use X6 with NIK color efex pro2. My desire is to use NIK with PSPx7 but that seems to not work. What is my next best besides NIK silver efex.

[pdxrjt]

Well, that's a bit of a subjective question. If you don't want to use SilverEFX with the script which is floating around here, I would suggest the Topaz B&W which I quite like also.

[Kathy_9]

I'll second the recommendation for Topaz B&W Effects. It does a great job.

[LeWhite]

@PDXRJT. I did see the posts about pasting a script. Right now scripting is above my pay grade. Does script work the same in x6 &x7 32bit. Where on the forum do you suggest I start reading. I kinda got lost at the installation folder location for the script as well as the NIK location as well as pointing PSP to that location. Are they trusted or restricted. Will scripts and plugins migrate from x6 and x7.Will I have to edit Python Libraries /DLL?

[Joelle]

This works well :

Joëlle

[pdxrjt]

You may have to tweak the scripts a little for them to work. I used the ones on this link and did a script for each of the NIK plug ins. Last time I tried, all worked well. I use them now in X7 64 bit and have attached each script to a button which I have added to my default toolbar. http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php ... script+nik The NIK plug ins (on my system) are in c: Program Files/Google/Nik Collection. It has been awhile since I looked at the posting, but it should have info in there as to whether the scripts are trusted or not. You could probably put them in both places. It did take me a bit of trial and error but maybe an hour or so (total) to make sure I had a script which worked for one plug in, change and resave it for every one of the Nik plug ins, then add buttons to my toolbar and save my configuration. If you have additional questions about the script I would try asking them in the original post.

[hartpaul]

The OP mentions NIK color efex pro2. With X4 and X5 I received NIK color efex pro3. Is that the same thing.
I have been able to copy that into the appropriate Plugins folder in X7 and have Nik working quite well theere. Have also got the KPT filters also.
There are plenty of ways to convert to black and white and which one is best will depend on your starting image and what you require as the result. So there is no "best" plugin or "best" script for all purposes.
Another way involves use of two hue saturation adjustment layers to control the contrast and filter effect on a black and white converted image. Because they are adjustment layers you can do many different tweaks to suit your image.
Do a google search for black and white conversions.

[pdxrjt]

The script which is referred to is one which permits the various Nik Plug ins to work inside of PSP, it is not for converting to BW or other purposes. While there are many ways to convert a photo to BW (and as I originally posted it is a subjective experience) it certainly would be a lot of work to obtain the results you can with the Nik or Topaz plug ins and I am not 100% sure you could achieve all of it with just PSP. However, you can make some very nice BW photos within PSP.