Nik Plugins

[IanButty]

#442118

Andrew asked the following in a comment on my blog post about Nik Plugins (https://www.ians-studio.co.uk/2017/11/blog-19-nov-2017-nik-collection-plugins/) :

Thank you Ian for this info.

I have heard/seen of the Nik Collection recently from various sources, all extolling their worth and effectiveness and what an absolute bargain they are. I am also a DxO user as a result of Adobe Camera Raw not (then) accommodating raw files from the Sony RX100/2 I had just bought (4yrs ago, or is it 5) so had to do intermediate conversion to DNG format to get them into ACR. That was tedious, so I took up DxO which did deal with Sony Raw, firstly with the “plain vanilla” version and then the paid-for Elite version – well worth it. It has just gone through a significant upgrade at a cost of £55 – when I think how much I use it that is very little. From DxO I use PSE, thus I am not a Lightroom user and, as I understand it, Nik Collection are plug-ins for Lightroom.

There is though another problem here …. When I recently bought my Sony A6300 I got a free version of a Sony particularised version of Capture 1, which is also well regarded. I have looked at it but not found the inclination to start to learn it. I know how DxO does what I want and so there is no real incentive to learn how another software will do much the same things (I assume) in its own way and with a different mid-set (don’t get me started on the change from Android to iOS!). So I won’t find out that it may do other things or do things better. That’s the problem – Inertia rules! well, it would if it could get going.

This was my reply:

Hi Andrew
Nik plug-in also work in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, so they may be of use to you even though you don’t use LR. You can also set up Capture One to work with them. They will even run stand alone… however, that comes with a warning: they were not designed to run standalone and using them that way is a bit of a kludge… you also need to make sure you are working on a COPY of your file as standalone they WILL overwrite the file you open.

Ian.

I am planning to do a post=processing tutorial on the Nik Plug-ins, but wasn’t going to cover how to install them – partly because my own set-up is non-standard and I have to install them in a different way to most people, nor do I have up to date copies of Capture 1 or Photoshop Elements to be able to show how to install with those. Is anyone interested in knowing how to use these free plug-in stand alone? No much point in spending time doing a video on that aspect if folks are only going to use them as plug-ins. The actual USE of the plugins remains the same whether you use them in LR, Photoshop, Elements, Capture 1 or stand alone. That aspect I am going to cover.

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