Nik and V1?

[MikeFromMesa]

I am sure this question has been asked before, but I could not find it in a search.

I returned to Affinity Photo (version 1) recently, having used Photoshop for a while, and again ran into the same issue that made me turn to Photoshop before. I could not get any plugins to work with Affinity Photo. What made me return was Nik saying that Nik 5 was compatible with Affinity Photo and guaranteed to work, so I installed Nik 5, making sure it copied the plugins to a specific folder, and then tried to set them in in AP, but it (AP) never saw the plugins so I am back where I was before. Hence some questions.

1) Is anyone using the Nik plugins with AP? If so, with AP? Or AP2?

2) Is there some support folder that needs to be specified in the AP plugins dialog box? If so, what?

3) Is AP compatible with Nik? Or only AP2?

4) The Nik "plugins" are all apps, and as far as I know AP does not support running external apps, so how are the Nik plugins supposed to work? Or am I missing something (again)?

Thanks for any help. I am using AP 1.10.6 which I believe is the latest version for V1 and am working on an M2 silicons Mac.

[GarryP]

8 minutes ago, MikeFromMesa said:

I am sure this question has been asked before, but I could not find it in a search.

I just did a forum search for nik plugin and got 683 results, most of which will be related to V1.
Where were you searching and which keywords were you using?

[MikeFromMesa]

I guess I was not clear enough in my initial post. I searched for Nik, but when I wrote that I did not find "it" I meant I did not find an answer to my questions, not that I did not get any responses.

In fact I got a ton of responses, but when I looked through them I could not find anything that explained why a Nik app could be used in AP V1 as a plugin, or why installing the Nik apps and setting up the plugin dialog box in AP did not even show them. 

[GarryP]

Ah, I see, thanks for the clarification.

I don’t use plugins, Nik or otherwise, so I can’t help much further but I do remember seeing lots of threads about this sort of thing.

I think some versions of the plugins will be compatible with V1 but there will probably come a point when the latest plugins are no longer compatible with V1 because of various technical reasons, and Serif probably won’t do anything to support them in V1 since they no longer sell licences for V1.

I remember seeing something that said that you could only use the plugin versions of the Nik stuff, rather than the application versions, but that might be a false memory.

I’ll leave this for a plugin expert to help further.

In the meantime, the table near the bottom of this page may be of use: 

https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409304781201-Nik-Collection-compatibility-with-OSes-third-party-software

 

[R C-R]

On 5/14/2023 at 7:57 AM, MikeFromMesa said:

so I installed Nik 5, making sure it copied the plugins to a specific folder...

How specifically did you do that, & what folder were they in? In Preferences (or Settings) > Photoshop Plugins, what do you have set for Plugins Search Folders & Plugin Support Folders? (A screenshot of this window would help.)

Finally, if you are using a Silicon Mac, you probably have to run AP in Intel emulation mode unless the plugins have been (re?)released as Universal ones. Do that by Getting Info for AP & check the “Open using Rosetta” option. For more about this, search the web on "Rosetta 2 Mac" or similar.

[MikeFromMesa]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

How specifically did you do that, & what folder were they in? In Preferences (or Settings) > Photoshop Plugins, what do you have set for Plugins Search Folders & Plugin Support Folders? (A screenshot of this window would help.)

Finally, if you are using a Silicon Mac, you probably have to run AP in Intel emulation mode unless the plugins have been (re?)released as Universal ones. Do that by Getting Info for AP & check the “Open using Rosetta” option. For more about this, search the web on "Rosetta 2 Mac" or similar.

As to how I did the installation, I followed the instructions in the Nik manual. That is, I specified that there was another app I wanted included by using the "+" sign, and got the Adobe Custom1 label that it said I should get, and I verified after the install that the apps had been copied to the /Applications/Nik Collection folder.

As to what I have in the Preferences -> Settings -> Photoshop Plugins entry, I first specified the Applications/Nik Collection folder in the search folder, checked the Unknown Plugins checkbox and authorized Global, specifying the root Macintosh folder. I did not know what to do with the Support folder because there were no instructions concerning it. I then restarted AP and when I did not see the plugins I then added the apps directly to the AP plugins folder and restarted again. Still no luck. Rebooting did not help either.

As to trying AP with the Rosetta setting ON, I tried that as well, but still no luck. No indication that anything had any affect, no listings of the Nik stuff and no indication that AP even knows that they are there. See the attached screen shot for what the AP Plugins dialog box looks like.

1 - Opened the default folder and copied the Nik apps into it.

2 - Added the Nik Collection folder to the Search folder

3 - Checked the Unknown plugins, just in case

4 - Authorized Global, using the Macintosh folder. Tired this with just the Nik folder as well, but it made no difference.

5 - There were no instructions I could find that said what to do with the support folder, so I tried it without one and with the system root folder. No difference.

Nothing shows up in the AP plugins list. Nothing.

If you can see something here that might help please let me know. I am reluctant to upgrade to version 2 since I can not get version 1 to work with the plugins and some of them are important to my editing. Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

 

[MikeFromMesa]

Just for the sake of completeness here is what I get when I try to access a plugin. As you can see there is nothing listed under the Plugins link.

 

 

[Return]

Make sure the selected layer is a pixel layer, image layers needs to be rasterized first.

[MikeFromMesa]

10 minutes ago, Return said:

Make sure the selected layer is a pixel layer, image layers needs to be rasterized first.

Thanks for the information. I did not know that, so I learned something today.

However the problem is that the plugins do not even show up to be called, so the problem is not that the layer is not rasterized or that the plugin call does not function properly. Still, I did another trial, made sure the layer was rasterized and tried again, but again no luck. But if I ever get this figured out then I will know now that the layer (or layers) have to be rasterized before making a plugin call, so thank you for that.

 

[R C-R]

For the Plugins Search Folders item, can you verify that in anywhere in Applications/Nik Collection there are items with the extension "*.plugin"? To do that, open Applications/Nik Collection in Finder & expand all its subfolders. Somewhere in there should be all the *.plugin items, separate from the items with the *.app extension.

[Return]

I'm on windows so cannot help you out with a mac specific issue.
Just wanted to point out that plugins need pixel layers.
 

[MikeFromMesa]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

For the Plugins Search Folders item, can you verify that in anywhere in Applications/Nik Collection there are items with the extension "*.plugin"? To do that, open Applications/Nik Collection in Finder & expand all its subfolders. Somewhere in there should be all the *.plugin items, separate from the items with the *.app extension.

That is one of the things that has puzzled me for some time. On the Mac the Nik "plugins" are not plugins, but apps, and that is how I referred to them earlier (item 4 in my initial post). That is true on the Mac, although I don't know about Windows.

On the Mac apps are really data structures and their contents can be viewed by examining the Contents folder in the app. For most apps that have plugins, like Skylum's Luminar Neo, you can find the actual plugin by examining the Contents subfolders and copy them out, but I have looked through the Nik apps for a plugin and there is not one there. In any of them. They are not really plugins in that sense; they are apps.

But Nik refers to them as plugins and the contents of the Application/Nik Collection, which Nik says contains the plugins, contains only apps. And the apps do not contain actual .plugin files. However if you look at the contents of the Nik apps you can see a Helper folder and I assumed that Nik had worked out some way to use the contents of their Resource or Helper folders to allow the use of the apps as plugins. Nik says that they are guaranteed to work with Affinity Photo, and yet they are apps, so I don't know what is really going on here. The obvious comment is that they don't work with AP because they are apps, not plugins, but according to Nik they are guaranteed to work. Go figure ...

I would do a trial install of Photoshop and see if the app plugins work with it, but I just rebuilt my system and don't want to clutter it up with extra garbage. I would end up uninstalling PS anyway.

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, MikeFromMesa said:

That is one of the things that has puzzled me for some time. On the Mac the Nik "plugins" are not plugins, but apps, and that is how I referred to them earlier (item 4 in my initial post). That is true on the Mac, although I don't know about Windows.

No, on Macs there should be both the apps (with the *.app extension) & usually nested in subfolders in the same parent folder, the plugins (with the *.plugin extension).

If not, it means the plugins were not installed or were installed in some other location. I don't have v5 installed on my Mac, just the older Google versions, but I assure you that regardless of the version, there should be a set of plugin files as well as the app files once the collection is installed correctly.

[MikeFromMesa]

24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

No, on Macs there should be both the apps (with the *.app extension) & usually nested in subfolders in the same parent folder, the plugins (with the *.plugin extension).

If not, it means the plugins were not installed or were installed in some other location. I don't have v5 installed on my Mac, just the older Google versions, but I assure you that regardless of the version, there should be a set of plugin files as well as the app files once the collection is installed correctly.

I had exactly this same issue with Nik 4, Run the installer and you only get the apps, not anything marked .plugin. The Nik instructions are quite clear in saying that the plugins will be installed in the /Applications/Nik Collection folder, and that is where the apps are. But no plugins. And I did a file system search looking for any images marked .plugin, and found nothing from Nik.

However I guess I should do what I should have done initially, and that is contact Nik support and ask them. My idea was to find out if anyone on this forum had any success running plugins with AP, and Nik was only the most convenient because they are the only company that says that they guarantee that their plugins work with AP. Topaz no longer seems to be making plugins for Apple Silicon machines and their older plugins are mostly either not supported or not Silicon compatible. Skylum's Neo plugin also does not work with AP. It does show up in the list, but doesn't work at all. Every attempt to call it resulted in either a crash or a hang.

 

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, MikeFromMesa said:

However I guess I should do what I should have done initially, and that is contact Nik support and ask them.

Alternately, maybe refer to this https://www.photography-raw.com/install-nik-collection-plugins-affinity-photo/, taking careful note of what it says about adding a location on the Compatible Host screen & particularly about creating a new destination folder for the plugins.

[MikeFromMesa]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Alternately, maybe refer to this https://www.photography-raw.com/install-nik-collection-plugins-affinity-photo/, taking careful note of what it says about adding a location on the Compatible Host screen & particularly about creating a new destination folder for the plugins.

I put aside all of my past experiences and decided to give my system another look for any possible hidden ".plugin" folders. The install instructions seemed pretty clear in saying that the installation would end up in the /Applications/Nik Collection folder, but then I have seen enough installation instructions that were just plain wrong that it seemed worth another look. And, sure enough, I found the .plugin files in a completely separate and un-noted location. So you were right and I was wrong. Thank you for that.

None of that means that the plugins actually work, but that is a different issue.  Sorry if I wasted everyone's time, but it did goad me into looking at my system again.

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, MikeFromMesa said:

And, sure enough, I found the .plugin files in a completely separate and un-noted location.

This almost certainly is because you did not create a new folder before running the installer & then added it on the Compatible Host screen when you ran it.

It is a common error because it is not very obvious that you need to do that for any 'host' apps other than the ones already listed there (usually just Adobe PS & Lightroom, if installed).