One of the most challenging aspects of digital imaging is making corrections to specific parts of the photo. It could be a color saturation issue, or maybe the tone is off on a particular area of the shot. In Photoshop, this means making a mask and doing your correction work. Depending on the complexity of the image and what you re trying to accomplish, this can be an easy task, or one that you spend hours on.

Enter Viveza, a new plug in from Nik Software. Viveza does one thing, and aims to do it very well make it easy to work on specific areas of an image without worrying about selecting and masking chores. Viveza works withPhotoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Apple Aperture, and uses the U Point technology, first seen in Nikon Capture NX, to work its magic.

Ease of Use
U Point is a novel way to make selective adjustments by placing a point where you want to make changes. From here, you adjust the size of the area to be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the size of the circle. By default, you have three adjustments available Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation. By dragging the sliders for each of these controls, you make changes to that tonal range. In the first example, the sky is a washed out blue. To correct this, I place a U Point in the sky and adjust the radius to cover the area I want to work with.

Key Features:

* U Point technology
Simply the most unique and powerful image editing technology available today, U Point powered controls allow you to precisely apply enhancements without the need for complicated selections or layer masks. Enhancements are automatically and naturally blended throughout your image for spectacular results.

* Color Control Points
Easily control an image s color, light, and tonality with Viveza s U Point powered Color Control Points. Simple to use sliders let you quickly adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, red, green, blue, and warmth, giving you ultimate control over your image.

* Time saving Interface
Key tools and controls used in Viveza are placed conveniently on the right side of your image workspace for fast and consistent access. A navigator loupe and resizable user interface help speed your workflow.