Restoring Silver Efex Pro 2 user presets (no .np files available!)

I hope, that the experienced users in this forum here might help me solve this.

I lost all my user presets, that I created for Silver Efex Pro 2, when I had to reinstall my MacBook Pro from scratch, since the restore-routine did not accept my Time Machine backups. So there is no way to restore these user presets via “export - re-import” described in the FAQ, since the required .np-file backups do not exist.

BUT: I am able to at least BROWSE the files inside the Time Machine Backup.

So, here is, how YOU could help me:

  • Where is Silver Efex Pro 2 storing these user-created presets? As I found out, there are no addtional .np-files on my computer, when I create a new user preset (this preset must be stored in some other format, file or configuration - wherever that may be…) - only when I export this preset, I do get an additional .np file

  • Since I have no access to any exported .np-file from my previously created presets, BUT I do have access to this full backup of my old MacBook Pro installation (Time Machine) - HOW and WHERE might these old installations and user presets be stored?

  • In the Mac-World, you can select to “browse” inside an app’s content: I did so with my old installations in the backup, but only found the “normal” .np-files from the official Nik-presets. No user-presets “inside” the app. The same applies to my NEW installation, when I create a user preset - the new app/installation only has the 37 official Nik-Preset .np-files, nothing more.

So, basically: I have a browsable backup from an old installation, where the Nik Collection and the DXO Nik collection were fully working INCLUDING my user created presets from Silver Efex Pro 2. How can I “extract” or “restore” these user created presets from that backup into my new installation? Since there are no additional .np-files, there must have been a way, Nik Collection was accessing these user presets via some other way…

I hope, I could make myself clear and thank you in advance for your help!

For all users, who will come across this post - I just got the solution from DXO-support and of course will share it here:

Presets, created or imported into previous versions by users, are available in this location here:

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences/Google/PLUGIN NAME and then there are 2 folders: UserPresets and ImportePresets

To use these presets in the Nik Collection by DxO 2018, the .NP files that are in these folders must be imported.

This article here can help you to do that.

This seems to apply to the old “NIK Collection” installation. In my case, since I already had updated to the DXO Nik Collection, the path was

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences/DXO/PLUGIN NAME