NIK Collection denies access

[Peterkaosa]

Hi, I am trying to use NIK collection as described in several posts. Installation runs and finishes properly, I can guide AP to the desired plugin folder, allow it the use of unknown plugins etc. 

 

Now comes the tricky part: I open an image and start filter -> plugins -> NIK Collection -> Analog Efex Pro 2. What happens now is best described this way: it seems the application NIK collection launches twice. First it launches in full screen mode and then in normal mode. I can see in the background that in full screen mode the image has been loaded, but not in the normal mode. And that is it. From here I cannot do anything but force-quit AP because no button will react on mouse clicks.

 

Any hints?

[MEB]

Hi Peterkaosa,

You have to Force Quit Affinity Photo going to menu Apple ▸ Force Quit...

Analog Efex 2 and other Nik Collection plug-ins don't run correctly in Full Screen Mode.

You have to run Affinity Photo in Windowed mode to use them.

[Peterkaosa]

Yes, I would like to use it in windowed Mode. But I have no choice, the collection launches both in windowed and full screen mode. And from here there is nothing to do for me.

[MEB]

I meant you have to be working with Affinity Photo in Windowed mode for the Nik Collection launch correctly in Windowed mode too.

When you launch Affinity Photo does it start in Full Screen mode? If so press ⌃(ctrl) + ⌘ (cmd) + F to exit Full Screen mode.

[Peterkaosa]

I meant you have to be working with Affinity Photo in Windowed mode for the Nik Collection launch correctly in Windowed mode too.

When you launch Affinity Photo does it start in Full Screen mode? If so press ⌃(ctrl) + ⌘ (cmd) + F to exit Full Screen mode.

You are one smart guy. Thx, problem solved.

 

btw: is this a difficult issue from a programmer's point of view? One of my favorite features of OS X is the full screen and split screen option. It would be great if you could solve this problem.

[MEB]

This doesn't happen with all plug-ins. Some from Topaz Labs for example work without issues in Full Screen mode. But for some reason the Nik Collection behaves this way. Only Andy Somerfield (project lead/developer on Affinity Photo) know for sure if there's a way around this without Nick Collection's developers support but I wouldn't hold out much hope since the Nik Collection is now free and probably not supported by Google anymore.

[R C-R]

There is another windows related issue you might see when using the Nik plugins with AP:

 

If you are running AP in separated mode (the Window menu "Separated Mode" item is checked), the plugin window appears & works fine, but when you close it (whether by canceling or saving) the AP document window will turn black & you won't be able to see its contents, although It will look normal in the Navigation panel.

 

Fortunately, to recover from this you don't have to force quit the app. You only need to go to the View menu & select the "New View" item. The new window won't have the black problem & will preserve any edits you saved while using the plugin, so you can then close the black window & continue working with the new one.

[MEB]

Thanks R C-R. I'm already aware of that one too. Unfortunately i'm not sure if we will ever have this working as expected anytime soon due to Google decision to make their plug-ins free.

[R C-R]

Considering that the collection is now free & that AP was never officially supported to begin with, I cannot get too upset that not everything about them is working with AP as well as we would like. The only really serious issue to be careful about is the full screen mode one, since force quitting to recover from it could potentially result in the loss of any work done since the last file recovery auto save occurred.

 

The other issues, like the error messages that pop up for the plugins that don't work at all, are just minor annoyances, & all the stand alone app versions work fine with OS X 10.11, so there really isn't a lot to complain about.

 

I even figured out a non-disruptive way to remove the non-working plugins from the AP Plugins menu that might be of interest to a few users. When I ran the Nik installer, I created a "Nik Collections" folder in the Applications folder, added that to the install locations list, & added that to the AP Plugins Search Folders list. To keep the non-working plugins from showing up in the AP Plugins menu, I zipped their folders & then deleted the originals, so my "Nik Collections" folder looks like this:

Doing this requires admin user authentication to delete the originals & move the zipped folders back into the Applications/Nik Collections folder (by default they appear on the Desktop) but that is easy enough to do.