I was very glad to hear that DxO was taking over development and support of the Nik Collection (as I have been a customer of DxO’s other photo processing products for many years). I had purchased the complete Nik suite from Nik and had it installed and still working on my system.
Along comes the DxO version release so I thought I’d check out the demo before deciding whether it is worth paying for.
Unhappy to find out that when it installed it wiped out my older licensed working version. As I needed to use the working tools in my workflow for a project I decided to uninstall the DxO version hoping to get my previous version back only to find out that the uninstaller did not return things to where I was before and so I now have no working version at all.
DxO should make their installer work in co-existance with older licensed/working versions rather than overwriting them, OR, make it obvious in their installer that it will remove any other previous versions of the Nik/Google versions it finds.
I uninstalled the previous version of the NIK Collection before installing the DXO version. In any case, after you uninstalled the DXO version did you try reinstalling your licensed Google version or were you assuming that just the act of uninstalling the DXO version would have been sufficient to restore your licensed copy?
A properly designed installer would install the plugins into its own location (e.g. Program Files/DxO/Nik Collection) and then create shortcuts into the Photoshop common plug-in location (i.e. Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Plug_Ins/CC/DxO Nik Collection) and not re-use something which Nik and/or Google used in the past.
When it uninstalled it would then just remove its shortcuts and its plugins and leave the other ones in place and so still operational. This is not what happened in that the Dx0 installer seems to have installed the plugins into the same place as the Google ones and then removed them.
Again, poorly executed and delivered on the part of DxO for not considering co-existance with licensed and/or previously working versions.
Yikes! I’ve done what Jeff’s done. @DxO - you’re going to need to provide an uninstaller that completely removes the so-called new version so I can successfully re-install my licensed software before the current trial period ends. If the current uninstaller already does this, please do tell us!
The new Nik installer by DxO installs the plugins in its own location Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection and creates shortcuts for all PS versions selected by the user during installation.
But the installer also uninstalls the previous Google / Nik versions (it’s an upgrade) and it makes sense because we offer an updated version of the plugins and in all cases PS loads only the most recent version so you cannot work with them side by side.
On the Lightroom side, having several versions of the same plugins will cause duplicated entries in context menu (for example) and will cause troubles for the users.
When you uninstall this new version, all files are removed and only the presets, settings and license are kept on the PC. So you can reinstall the previous version but you have to move back your presets and settings
While it may be what you are doing, I think is it extremely poor practise to erase licensed and functional versions of a product your installer did not install, especially when you do this with your trial version.
Based on your reply it is clear DxO has no intention of changing this problematic behaviour and instead force potential customers to try and find their old installer for their licensed versions if they decide your version is not worth buying. At the very least make it extremely clear in your installer that it will ‘upgrade’ (aka ERASE) any other version of the software even though that was installed by another companies installer, and make sure an acknowledgement or cancel option is provided at that time.
Could you check the rights of your folder : ~/Library/Preferences/DxO
Your user should have Read/Write rights, if it is not the case you need to add then.
Hello Jeff,
To be perfectly transparent, we were thinking the users will switch back to the free version provided by DxO if they don’t want to switch to the new paid version and not switch back to the previous Google version.
You’re perfectly right we should state in the installer that the previous Google version will be uninstalled (@bsayakhom, what do you think ?).
You original license from the Google/Nik version is not erased, it’s only moved in a different folder. You can move it back from C:\ProgramData\DxO\Nik Collection to C:\ProgramData\Google\Nik Collection
I no longer have my Google installer and I am unaware of the location of the “free” version that DxO makes available for download. I don’t see it on the site. To be frank, I find the “new” version less stable than the old which was working perfectly well and which you uninstalled without my consent or knowledge. Can you point me to this version you were “thinking the users will switch back to” if they didn’t want to continue with the “new” version? Thanks!
We are very interested about your feedback about the stability issues you’re mentioning. Do you have any clue or steps ? Could you tell us more about it?
I just tried to add three filters to a Smart Object in Photoshop using Color Efx and it crashed Photoshop causing me to lose my work. No programs other than Lightroom were open and only two tabs in Photoshop were open. That never happened before. In general, I’m seeing Photoshop crash more when using the DxO Nik Plug-Ins. Look, I support further development and I’m a committed Nik user so I’m not trying to complain for the sake of complaining. And I’m willing to support development financially. But the product should move forward not backwards
First, could you please clarify what platform you use WIN or MAC?
About your crashes connected to Filters with the Smart Object - we fixed the similar or probably the same crash (hard to say without additional info).
