NIK Plug-ins advantages?

[GeoffM33]

Hi, I have just installed the NIK Collection of Plug-ins. What are the advantages of using these as compared with the built-in Affinity Photo tools? Especially the de-noising and sharpening tools - are they "better" or just presented differently? Do they work in a different way? What can they do that Affinity can't?

Cheers.

GM33

[verysame]

For general use, I'm fine with Affinity denoiser, but in tricky situations Nik's dfine works much better.

There are things that you can't replicate in Affinity (or any other raster editing software really), like Silver Efex which features print emulation. The trade off is you break the workflow as any operation you do in Nik is destructive. So, it really depends what's the type of job your are doing.

I tend to use dfine and silver Efex: as for the latter, I usually prepare the work with the Affinity's tools (basic color correction to have a good starting point) and, as a last step, I work in silver Efex (as I would do with a LUT). I save my presets in silver Efex so I can later re-use them or transfer them to another machine. 

[John Rostron]

Yes, the Nik plug-ins are destructive in that they replace the active layer. You need to remember to duplicate the actve layer before invoking Nik. (Which I do not always remember to do!)

[GeoffM33]

Thanks for your comments and work-flow tips. I will continue with Nik on this basis and watch this topic for other info.