NIK improvements

It’s pretty clear the Nik codebase needs an almost full rewrite of the wrapper at this point (written for very old API’s a long time ago), even if the core code/algorithms can be salvaged largely as is. I had ColorEfex Pro up from Photoshop the other day while preparing a review of RAW development tools. The creative work behind ColorEfex Pro makes competitors look completely second rate (I won’t name names here as it’s not the right time or place).

What I’m getting at it:

  1. the Nik applications as is are better than they are given credit for due to their age.
  2. the job of remaking them is a very big one, could take years.

Years waiting would be a bit of a marketing and revenue catastrophe. I’d suggest a two tier solution.

  1. Fix the wrapper now, but leave the core algorithms alone and the physical interface as well. As long as Nik displays true pixels in 4K in hires mode, nothing else really needs to be solved.
  2. As a second and independent phase, rewrite the code base as DxO PhotoLab addons (like ViewPoint and FilmPack).

If you get Nik working properly in Affinity Photo (no clumsy workarounds, no crashing bugs if exact workflow is not followed), I pledge to buy another license (I already own a pre-DxO license) for Nik. You’ll probably need help from Serif as the plugin situation with Affinity Photo is catastrophic. Current major issues with Nik include incompatibly with all non-SRGB colour profiles and overwriting the last layer when saving back to the master application.

The other platform for which to retain support is Adobe Photoshop CS6. Many of your customers (myself included) won’t go on Creative Cloud but do have an existing Photoshop CS6 license. For now, the Nik plugins from the Google epoch do work great in Photoshop CS6. If that were to change I wouldn’t be happy to lose Photoshop CS6 as a Nik platform.

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To eliminate overwriting the last layer when saving back to the master application, simply hit the Undo button. It appears that the last command in the filter application is to merge layers - hitting Undo puts the filtered layer above the last layer. Works for me in Photoshop CC 2019.

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Thanks for the tip, Jim. That’s simple and effective. Much appreciated.