I had an installation of the free download of DxO Nik Collection lying around which I didn’t use because I didn’t have any of the officially supported host applications. But then I started playing with free XnView MP image viewer, and saw that it can host Adobe Photoshop plugins. I thought about Nik… and yes, Sharpener Pro works! Color Efez crashes after I start it within XnView, but Sharpener Pro works 
But you know, that you do not need a host application to use the NIK tools? Just create a shortcut to, lets say Viveza, on your desktop or in your task bar and drag drop a photo on the shortcut icon.
3 Likes
jawdrop
Why isn’t that written in BIG BOLD LETTERS at the beginning of every Nik tool doc? It’d increase the sales a lot. All that time I was under the impression that I can’t use them because I don’t have a compatible host application. Marketing / sales fail.
Yes, and if you have PhotoLab, you can “Export to Application”, where you can select a NIK tool to take over the output file from PL. For the case you want to apply some after effects for example.
2 Likes
They won’t open raw format but do work with jpeg and tiff format. That’s why you kind of need a host, or really just a software to start the processing.
Seriously, this should be documented better. I was not aware at all of those options. Thanks for the info!
Note to: @sgospodarenko - See above …
Looks like there’d be benefit in Marketing taking this on, and making this capability more widely known.
Regards, John M
PS. More on this capability here: Accessing NIK collection plug-ins from host applications
I looked at it just now. It’s not exactly what I need, because it doesn’t allow to resize the output before passing it to the external program. So I still need to export to file, and then open the JPEG in NIK Sharpener.
1 Like
OK, I’m curious … Why would you want or need to do that ?
John M
Because the main reason I’m sharpening the JPEGs is to remove the softening caused by scaling them down to e.g. Facebook resolution (max. 2048 pixels).
NIK Sharpener Pro doesn’t allow you to rescale the image, AFAIK.
In that case, you might use the Export to Disk process from PhotoLab to resize AND sharpen the image, both at the same time (and without the hassle of exporting to NIK Sharpener) ?
ie. In the Export to Disk dialog, check/tick the “Allow image resampling” option then choose your output size AND “Bicubic sharpener” as your Interpolation method …
Regards, John M
I used this method before, but it oversharpens quite often and offers no control over the sharpening amount applied. NIK Sharpener is much, much better.