Disappointing lack of response from DxO on this forum

I have recently received advertising emails from DxO trying to tempt me to take advantage of the soon-to-expire offer on Nik Collection 4. This is rather annoying because I have posted a question recently here about the compatibility of the updated software with my existing version of Photoshop Elements, and received no reply so far, and so will miss the offer (if indeed the program were to prove compatible). I note too, that there seem to be several queries posted in the Nik section of the forum to which no response has been made.

I realise that this forum is largely the work of users, who kindly share their knowledge and experience of DxO software, and clearly my question may well not be one to which other users here can furnish an answer. That is entirely understandable and my comments here are certainly not intended as criticism of other forum members. However, surely someone at DxO could quite easily provide an authoritative answer? Do staff at DxO not monitor content here? I note that on the user forum of Affinity Photo it seems to be normal practice for Affinity staff members to answer questions as well as users, but then Affinity does seem to be a rather unusual company, not least because it seems willing to provide substantial updates without extra cost.

This forum is, as you write, a user forum mostly.

The Nik Collection manual lists workflows for a handful of products, but not for PSE.

DxO offers free 30 day trials for all its products and I recommend to try before buying software (not only DxO’s) if possible. This could help you to find out if Nik4 does what you want and how it works with PSE.

If you’ve used an earlier version of Nik, make a backup and keep its installer for fallback. Nik installers replace existing installations.

You don’t say which version of Elements you own, but according to this Adobe link from April 2021 there is no Nik Collection plug-in capability with Elements. I doubt anything has changed since then even with the latest version of both Elements and the Nik Collection. Hope this helps.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/nik_compatibility_issue.html

Thank you for your replies. It would therefore seem that it would not at present be worth my while upgrading to Nik 4. I am currently using Nik 3 quite satisfactorily with Photoshop Elements 2019, and since it seems that I would lose that functionality and only gain improvements to Viveza and Silver Efex, (which I would need to access via Affinity Photo) it hardly seems a worthwhile exercise to upgrade at this time.

I only rarely use Silver Efex, and since the improvements to local adjustments in PhotoLab, I now use Viveza far less than previously.

What would be nice would be the ability to use the Nik selective tool in Affinity Photo, since using this tool in PSE 2019 is rather more straightforward than working with Nik filters in Affinity. I’m unsure whether developing the Nik selective tool to work in Affinity is a DxO or Affinity (or joint) task. In any case, I think I’ll wait until a future update to Nik extends the present improvements to Viveza to Color Efex etc.

Given your limited use of Silver Efex Pro, I would definitely stick with what you have rather than risk breaking it. The main differences between Nik 3 and Nik 4 are the interfaces for Veveza and Silver Efex Pro,.

Mark

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just have a look → Issues with Nik4 - #8 by Wolfgang and further links …

In the past, the Nik Selective Tool always has been giving trouble, so that I dumped it since long.
Nik 3 collection works with my old software.

According to Digital Camera World, Nik collection 4 is usable as a stand-alone program

If for any reason the plugin does not work from an editor, you can always save the image as a jpg, TIF file, and open Nik directly from the file browser.

Nik Collection works great as Stand Alone. I use them only as Stand Alone, even with DXO PL4.

I like my RAW files separated from the TIFFs. So as Stand Alone I can run them anywhere and whenever I want, without host.

I use ACDSee to call them as external editor, but a simple drag and drop work just fine.