I looked around on the web and this forum and know how to use PL3/Nik together but have not seen this question directly addressed. In Lightroom I have the choice of opening an image in Nik either with/without LR adjustments or if Nik has already been applied once to open the original TIF file so that I don’t end up with multiple intermediate TIF files if I use Nik more than one. I can stack the Nik effects by applying one effect (e.g., Color Efex 4), then saving the changes which roundtrips the file back to LR at which time I can reopen the original TIF and send it to a different Nik module. This way I can stack all of the effects onto one TIF file. PL3 doesn’t seem to have this feature and always generates a new TIF when sent to a Nik module. Am I missing something here? Is there a way to always work on only one TIF file without always generating a new one?
Welcome, @SGB! Yes, this is possible. It is documented in the online help guide for Nik Collection 3:
In PhotoLab 3, select the TIFF file you want to work on in the Nik Collection. Click on the “Nik Collection” button at the bottom of the screen. Select “Export Options” and there you can do this:
In the Edit in dialog box, choose Export selected file(s) without processing and confirm by choosing OK .
Thanks, Greg. That is exactly the function I was looking for. Appreciate the help!
You should be able to do this yes, but this is more related to how you use Lightroom rather than how Nik works. Nik will edit whatever you send to it from the host program, how you use Lightroom to send files to Nik is the workflow you need to figure out. It is my understanding that only the edits from the last Nik plugin used can be revisited.
This will all be done from within PL3 and not LR. It is also using the older version of Nik and not Nik 3 which does have the ability to undo the last effect applied to the photo through the use of layers in the TIFF file. I’m hoping that one day PL and Nik will be better integrated so that they both function from within the same interface and not by exporting the photo to Nik and then roundtripping it back to PL. Not only does this make for a chaotic workflow it also generates huge TIFF files (e.g., a ~20MB RAW file balloons to over 100MB using this process). DxO support said they are aware of this desired integrated functionality and large TIFF file size but right now a solution is a long way off in in the future.