Sorry for being unavailable for the last week, but I was out of the country on vacation. I got a bunch of responses to my last post, Using Nik Plug-ins with Capture NX 2 and I thought I’d clarify a few things.
- The workflow I describe only works on TIFF or JPEG images. This is because that is how Lightroom/Aperture plug-ins work. You cannot open a NEF file directly in any Nik plug-in– even those of us with Photoshop need to use ACR and convert their raw files to TIFF before the plug-in reads it.
- The workflow I describe is not something that Nik designed intentionally; it’s simply a by-product of the way Lightroom plug-ins work, and something I came across and thought I’d share. I’m sharing this with my readers to offer those people who don’t use Adobe products a way to access the great features of the Nik plug-ins.
- Because this “feature” was not something that Nik intentionally designed, they don’t offer support for it. If it works for you, that’s awesome. As with all things, try the free demo of the software first before you buy it!
Happy shooting!
I was able to get this to work wiht Dfine and Silver Efex, but HDR Efex Pro would not install correctly (for anything including PS and LR) so I’m not sure how that will go until I can get some help from Nik on the install failure.
This is a fudge, but better than nothing, as I’d rather not use PS just to use a plug-in.
Hopefully, Nik will someday make CNX and their plug-ins compatible. The way Color Efex integrates into CNX is great!
That’s odd. Not sure why the installer wouldn’t run properly. Then again, I do have PS and LR installed on my computer.
As I have stated here and on other forums, I am having the same install problems with the HDR program. SEP works great. I did find some files that seemed to indicate some problems with anti-virus stuff preventing the startup of HDR program but couldn’t really figure it out. I use Photomatix 4.0 so I am not desperate, but it would be nice to try.
Eric Bowles on Nikonians has an interesting post on the possible release of CNX3 and some Nik stuff. Like anything along these lines, take it for what it is worth..
I downloaded and installed the HDR Efex Pro demo and tried it with one set of images and it worked. Will try several more with my 15 day trial but I like the results from my first effort.
For HDR Efex Pro, you need to load multiple images, so it is a manual process. See this video: http://youtu.be/Wl42bokv8WA
-Jason
I like the idea very much. But LR plug-ins (except HDR) work not properly when no Lightroom is installed. It takes ages before an image opens and working on it is impossible.
Gunter-
My experience is absolutely the opposite. The LR plug-ins work faster than the Photoshop versions.
-Jason
Well, they don`t work when no Lightroom is installed! I tested it on another machine with a demoversion of Lightroom and everything is perfect.
Something seems to be wrong with my setup on drive C:\. Even with LR installed it`s slow. May be because auf HDR Efex installed before? Don`t know yet.