My Nik plugins are greyed out on some images but not on others

[pipkato]

My Nik plugins are greyed out on some images but not on others.  

 

I recently scanned some old B&W negs to JPEG images and was trying to use my installed Nik plugins in Affinity Photo but they are greyed out.  Other JPEG images I have in my folders work fine and all the Nik plugins are available for both B&W and Colour images.  It seems that all my recent scans will not work with Nik plugins.  I presume I've done something wrong but I've no idea what that is.  The only thing I've noticed that seems new is that when I open those problematic B&W scans in Affinity Photo I get a window with a message saying 'Assigned Profile - Affinity Photo assigned your working profile, (Greyscale D50) to this unprofiled document' which disappears after a short while.  I don't really know what this means or if it's significant in relation to the Nik Plugins issue.

 

Can anyone help?

 

Thanks!

 

 

[John Rostron]

Are your B&W images greyscale images or just RGB desaturated? I recall that nik will not work on greyscales. Try converting the greyscale image to RGB. You might also like to check your scanner settings to see if it is saving as greyscale or RGB..

John

[pipkato]

Hello John, and thanks for replying so quickly.

 

All the images I tried show as 'grayscale' when I  checked.  I don't know much about the whole colour space area, but I tried exporting some of them from Affinity to JPEGS and changed the colour space to RGB.  And, as you suggested, I was able to use my Nik plugins on those images.  I'll also take your advice and check out my scanner.  It's an elderly Minolta Scan Multi II which I'm using with Vuescan software.  I never came across this issue before, but maybe everything else I did was originally RGB.  Anyway, it's great to find out what the cause of the problem is.  I presumed that since the Nik software dealt with B&W images as well as colour that it would be happy with any B&W image.  But it appears not to be the case.

 

 

[John Rostron]

You can change the colour mode within Affinity Photo. Use Document >  Color Format > RGB (8bit). If you saved as a higher-bit, then use 16bit. Nik should work with 16-bit images.

In Vuescan, use the Settings Input > Media > Color.

John

[pipkato]

Thanks John.  Very helpful.

 

 

[iso68]

2+ years later and in version 1.8.5 I just solved the same issue. An *.arw RAW, processed to the photo persona. Result:

Solution:

Document > Convert Format / ICC Profile > Changed to RGB/16

...and all is good.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

You'll find many plugins won't work on 32-bit images, @iso68. It's important to know what your plugins expect.