Since I upgraded to Lightroom Creative Cloud subscription-based applications my Nik Software plugins—Color, Silver and Analog Efex Pro, Dfine, Sharpener Pro and Viveza—have been working flawlessly. Right click on an image, go to “Edit In” and the full list of available plugins was presented.
Last weekend, however, I noticed that all plug-ins, with the exception of Color Efex Pro for some reason, had disappeared from the Edit dialogue box. I immediate suspected foul play involving a big dose of housekeeping done the previous day.
I had decided to import the residue of my old Aperture library that has been sitting there since I changed over the Lightroom a couple of years ago. I’d been putting off importing all the older stuff for over a year since I attacked the previous years’ files immediately before I change to Lightroom. As it happens, there were no significant glitches, except, afterwards, my Nik Collection had apparently “disappeared”.
I soon located this useful Lightroom forums post which deals with the obscure “Store presets with catalog” setting in Lightroom:
There is an option available in the Lightroom Preferences (Edit Menu>Preferences on Windows, Lightroom Menu>Preferences on a Mac), where you will see on the Presets Tab an option to “Store presets with catalog”. This particular setting has very limited useful applications, and when used unwisely or without proper knowledge of its implications it can (and often does) cause a certain amount of chaos. So, unless you have a specific requirement to use it, you are strongly advised to leave the setting in the default unchecked position.
While this option specifically relates to presets, it can also hide plug-ins as I found. I checked my installation and, sure enough, the Store Presets option had become enabled, presumably during the import of the Aperture library.
Despite the forum advice above, there are some instances where you would want to enable the “store with catalog” setting and the same document covers most of the eventualities. It’s a good idea to read through this before doing anything.
There could be other reasons for Nik Collection plug-ins not appearing in the Lightroom. This Google support document, which also covered the “Store presents with catalogue” issue discussed above, goes on to help solve deeper problems by re-installation of the Nik Collection and adjustment of the settings for individual plug-ins.
Thanks Mike and Stephen. I like landscape shots and when I first acquired a Fujifilm camera, I found that Lightroom was ‘unkind’ to greenery, particularly leaves on trees. I had not had this problem with Leica, Lumix and Nikon images. I searched the internet and I found that a lot of people were recommending Iridient. I used it and found it an improvement but still not perfect. I still think that Fujifilm have some work to do and I have hopes that the XPro-2 will show further improvements. Fujifilm make cameras with the right size and the right controls, far superior to most other makes with their menu driven approach. If they can crack the Lightroom issue they will be way ahead of field.
As for the customer service aspect, you are seeing clear indications of what monopoly does to approaches to customer support. Apple, Google, Adobe and Microsoft are examples of such ‘monopoly’ companies. When you grow big you tell your customers what they can and cannot do, unlike Iridient which is fighting to grow its customer base. IT users all around the world have been jumping around like puppets on a string for years now as they follow the latest software release from the above-mentioned companies and then moan about the features it does and does not not contain. As for embedding edit links in Lightroom, Adobe make little effort to make sure that their customers can know how to use these even with links to their very own Photoshop product. I find that embedded links to NIK filters etc are extremely ‘flaky’ in Lightroom and often have to be re-loaded.
When I have problems with software, I don’t regard it as the end of the world but I usually ‘google’ to see what others have done and then I fix the problem. I don’t ever spend time agonising about such ‘first world’ issues. If I had the energy I would organise a group do deal with the the behaviour of the ‘big companies’ but it seems that there are plenty of clever people out there who are already finding ‘workarounds’ even before I find out that a ‘problem’ exists.
William
I wouldn’t put anything past the Adobe people Mike. I was distinctly unimpressed by their ability to provide support for older files… If you remember, I scan my developed negatives with a Nikon Coolscan, which outputs .nef files.
At around the same time, I read something (I think it was from Bill Palmer guesting here) that mentioned Iridient Developer being good with Fuji files. I downloaded the trial and immediately discovered that it didn’t open .nef files either…
I sent a frustrated tech support email and almost by return, received a reply from someone (Brian) who seemed not only knowledgable, but actually interested in helping me. He asked for some test files, he told me that I was quite right and that HE would endeavour to support them in his next update… Just before Christmas, he made a reduction in the price, so I bought it, more or less because he was so personable and supportive…
I didn’t touch it after that until last week when I received an email stating that he had added support for the Nikon Coolscan files, along with several others.
I downloaded all 11MB of the application, and loaded a .nef file and it opened…
Impressed I immediately wrote back and thanked him, told him that this is the way the internet should work…
As you say Mike, you were attempting to transfer all of your Aperture stuff into Lightroom when you had your problem… I was not impressed when Apple abandoned us Aperture users…
I have also not been at all impressed by the bloat of any of the behemoth packages, something that Apple in particular used to laugh at Microsoft for, whilst proceeding to follow suit. I have got whole hardrives full of Apple and Adobe "libraries", Lord knows what is on them, I am assuming that I still have the originals, but on the offchance that I don’t, they are still sitting there… iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom, and Photos + Time machine and Lightroom backups!
Finally, in my email to Brian who it turns out IS the Iridient Developer, I asked him for advice about the library function, and did he think that "Photo Mechanic" (which my daughter uses at the Press Association) was better than the others…
His diplomatic reply was that he had heard good things about it (my daughter rates it highly), but he did not use it… He just uses the file system and presumably sends developed files to Preview or Photos.
If I remember rightly, the Nik collection, run perfectly well as stand alone applications, so if you don’t mind loading more than one program, as opposed to loading one behemoth, one can achieve the same result… And categorically know that no underhanded nonsense is going to befuddle you.
Je reposé mon valise….
Thanks Stephen. Things seem to be running well at the moment and I have the Nik stuff back in the Lightroom menus. I must explore Iridient and see why it is so popular. It was t Bill, I am fairly sure it was William Fagan who said he uses it. It is very good when you can get personal support such as this from Brian. Your valise is cogent.
Thanks Mike, my apologies to William Fagan for it was he, now that you remind me.