Photo 2 and Silver Efex from DxO Nik Collection 1

[stuck]

I'm on Win 10.  I have a .CR3 file that I developed in Photo 2 and then saved as .afphoto. The layer stack is only one layer, for levels.  If I then pass this image (via Photo's menu commands: Filters | Plugins | etc.) to Silver Efex (the version that comes with the first version of the NIK Collection released by DxO, i.e. the version where they took the collection they bought from Google and simply fixed a couple of 64 bit problems didn't do much else), then it takes a very long time for it to appear in SEfx and when it does, it is not right, it's only about a quarter the size it should be.  Plus all the preset previews are tiny as well:

 

Yet, if I first export the .afphoto file to a TIFF and then open that TIFF in Photo 2 and pass it to SEfx, it opens much more quickly and everything is OK:

 

If this is a 'known issue' I apologise for not finding it in the forum.  Otherwise, has anyone else seen this behaviour?

[firstdefence]

There are several plugins that have abnormal image distortion within the plugin when used from Affinity Photo, Imagenomic Portraiture corrupts the image, Eyecandy 7 vertically flips the image etc etc. I'm guessing the applied effects and image size are not affected when the plugin is applied?

NIK Collection v 5.2.1 and version 5.4.0 both display correctly

[stuck]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

I'm guessing the applied effects and image size are not affected when the plugin is applied?

Don't know, I've not yet applied anything in SEfx to see what happens when the image returns to Photo 2 but regardless of the end result, it's nigh on impossible to use SEfx with small image like this so even if it does work it's not really a practical workflow.

I guess the moral is, I shouldn't invoke my NIK plugins on a ,afphoto file but always export to TIFF first.

 

PS I've never bothered to update my NIK Collection because, for me, it's not value for money plus I'm not convinced the debacle that was the release of DxO's version 4 of the collection has been fully resolved.  I estimate it will be v9 of the collection before it stops being a beta product.  From there, applying the 'nothing's right until v3' rule means that it won't be until v11 that it will be worth spending money on 😀

[stuck]

As another note on this.  If I process the same .CR3 file in Photo 1, save it as a .afphoto file and then pass it to SEfx, everything works as expected.

Conclusion:  Photo 2 is a step too far for my old version of SEfx.

[Murfee]

Hi @stuck, are you processing the raws as linked or embedded? If so then duplicate the background then rasterise, pass that layer to the plugin, saves creating a separate tiff.

[stuck]

17 minutes ago, Murfee said:

are you processing the raws as linked or embedded?

Neither, the RAW was passed to the Photo Persona as a pixel layer, i.e. I made Photo 2 behave the same way as Photo 1, to ensure I was making a direct comparison.

[firstdefence]

43 minutes ago, stuck said:

if I first export the .afphoto file to a TIFF and then open that TIFF in Photo 2 and pass it to SEfx, it opens much more quickly and everything is OK:

Might try this for Eyecandy 7 and Imagenomic portraiture, ironically their Real Grain and Noiseware plugins resolve images fine.

[stuck]

Umm, an update on this problem.  It appears that user error is an key component of the matter

While in the Develop persona I had levelled the horizon using the 'straighten' feature in the crop tool.  The rotation involved was tiny.  What I then failed to do was adjust the crop to take account of the rotation.  I made that mistake because I am more familiar the horizon tool in DxO Photolab and in that application the default behaviour is to automatically crop in keeping with the rotation.

It turns out it is this failure to crop the rotated image that causes SEfx to choke and not scale the image correctly, i.e. if I don't tweak the horizon at all, or I do tweak it and crop accordingly, the SEfx behaves as expected.

I've yet to go back to Photo 1 to double check how rotation & lack of cropping is handled in that version.