Nik Collection 4.3.4 causing Photoshop Elements 14 to crash?

Nik Collection by DxO
#1

I use Nik Collection as a plugin in both DxO PhotoLab (most of the time) and an old version of Photoshop Elements (Version 14) which I mostly only use now for stitching panoramas (I could do without it altogether if DxO provided a stitching app).

I updated Nik to version 4.3.4 on 30 April and now when I try to open Photoshop Elements, it crashes within a few seconds before I can do anything. I’ve tried rebooting the PC several times to no avail. Ditto opening PSE without anything else running - it still crashes. I’m running Windows 10 and not aware of any Windows updates since I last used PSE that might be causing the problem. So I wonder if the new version of Nik Collection is clashing in some way with my ancient (c.2014) edition of PSE - it’s been pretty reliable up to now.

Next time a new version of Nik is offered I’ll uncheck the plugin for PSE to see if that makes a difference - I don’t really need to be able to open it in PSE anymore but don’t know how to remove it as a plugin from PSE given that I can’t keep it open for more than about 5 seconds and therefore can’t access its settings.

#2

check here if supported
→ https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409304781201-Nik-Collection-compatibility-with-OSes-third-party-software

if not → reinstall Nik 3.3 (without deleting your Nik 4 version !)
→ Issues with Nik4 - #8 by Wolfgang and further links

#3

Thanks for that, Wolfgang. The first link is very useful - according to this, Nik Collection 4 is not compatible with PSE 14 - not a huge surprise I guess, given how old it is. To be honest, I probably haven’t tried to use Nik via PSE since it was version 3. If I’d known it was incompatible I simply wouldn’t have checked it as a plugin for PSE because I don’t really need to use it via PSE anymore, I’d just checked it as a plugin for PSE by force of habit every time a new version of Nik came out.

PSE doesn’t crash when I try to open Nik as a plugin - it crashes within a few seconds of me opening PSE. Which it wasn’t doing with earlier versions of Nik 4, even if I couldn’t actually use them as a plugin. So reinstalling Nik 3.3 would be pointless if I was going to leave Nik 4.3.4 installed, because the latter would still be a plugin for PSE. So if there isn’t some way that I can remove Nik as a plugin without having PSE open, I’ll have to wait until the next version of Nik comes along and uncheck it as a plugin for PSE.

As an aside, given that Nik 4 isn’t compatible with these old versions of PSE etc., it’s unfortunate that you can still add it as a plugin.

#4

I’m still using LR 5.7 and with each new version of PL or Nik collection, I get PlugIns for LR which would work, IF my old LR was supported – but isn’t.
So, you either check where they are stored and try to get rid of them OR just ‘ignore’ them.

I’m using Nik 3.3 (mainly) and Nik 4 (mostly for testing).

#5

Has anyone figured out a fix for Photoshop Elements 2020 crashing after updating to 4.3.4? I explained the situation here: Nik Collection 4.3.4 causing Photoshop Elements 2020 to crash, and have a DxO support ticket going, but so far haven’t found an answer and I will need my Photoshop Elements 2020 for work tomorrow. The easiest thing I guess I’ll do is reinstall PSElements and not include Nik plugins, if that’s easy to figure out. The other option I’m guessing is to export out all my presets, uninstall the Nik collection and then reinstall it. Has anyone else had that problem and done either of those things? Thanks!

#6

Hi Cove,
just reading this. – When you get your editor running without PlugIns (or not using them), you should be able to open your tif-/jpg-outputfile with Nik application standalone. But I’m on Windows and don’t know how things are organized on MacOS.