Nik Collection 6's Silver Efex Pro

Does Nik Collection 6 give us any substantive changes in Silver Efex Pro? By that I mean the fundamentals, not just some new splashy interface.

I use PhotoLab6 for almost all of my post-processing, and the only Nik thing I really use is Silver Efex – which I use a LOT! I turn off PhotoLab’s sharpening and noise reduction and use Topaz for both, since they give me more overall control and I like the results more than those from PhotoLab or Nik. Since I’m more into reportage, I rarely spend time doing nuance-seeking in discrete areas of my photos.

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curious which “fundamentals” you are lacking ?

That’s not the question.

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Have you checked the release notes and/or the user manual?
https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/categories/115002389907

I have the same question, which is not answered by the release notes, user manual or Nik Collection website. I also rely on Silver Efex Pro, and would like to know if there are any changes to that component in Nik Collection 6 (other than things like changes to Control Points, which affect all modules). In other words, if you are primarily interested in Silver Efex Pro, is the upgrade worth it?

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I think we are in the same boat. Beyond the typical RTFM reply, no enlightening information has appeared here.

I haven’t seen that much substantive improvement in Silver Efex in several years. That’s not a problem for me. I certainly don’t see any reason for upgrading to Nik Collection 6.

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In the case of the Nik Collection, new release questions are infrequently answered by DxO staff in this forum. Without an early access program (I’m not aware of one having been launched for Nik 6), we’re all equally unfamiliar with the product.

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try the trial version to find out? As I look at the changelog, it seems that exepct the changed in the local adjustments/masking, there are no new features in Silver Efex Pro

asuming you are now using NIK version 5

Robin Whalley was given a beta test version and used it for a while. He has produced a video of himself using it on his images

here is the link Whats New in the Nik Collection 6 - YouTube

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…Which pretty much concluded that there are not deep changes in the guts of the different applications. Rather, the changes are in the interface and workflow.

Maybe if they bring the update down to $39 for Black Friday or some other reason…

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Since the last updates of Nik have been a disaster (more gnashing of teeth here, desperate attempts to reinstall older versions of Nik and retrieve lost custom presets, than joy from any updaters), I’m still on Nik 3. My rights to a reduced price upgrade have been removed. Way to go DxO to motivate Nik owners (and fans, for I am one) to upgrade! €149 is not going to happen.

Bit the bullet.

As there was a new version of Affnity, sorted that first. Removed the old NIK 4 too (and made sure I have a copy of the installer!)

Installed Affinity 2.1 - flawless. Detected everything it needed to including my other plugins.

Installed NIK. Detected Affinity 2.1 no problem, along with PL6

Then abjectly failed to actually install the plugins to Affinity.
Back to manual install from within Affinity.

Quick check with PL6 - NIK collection has NO ColorEfex, NO SilverEfex, NO Perspective. No idea how to get them to display the missing options.

lol. I haven’t turned off Update Notifications, but a quick check finds … an update ready to download that specifially mentions it is need for Nik 6 compatability. “#rse end up’ards” as we say round here.

Release the update BEFORE the app that needs it to run? :smiley:

Now they all appear.

Just another day in the weird and wonderful life of a DxO user trying to fathom the logic of DxO decisions :smiley:

Another weird thing: When I work a series of images with the standalone app and want to save all changes at the end of the session, there is no option that allows me to do so.

  1. There is no button saying “save all” like the one we get e.g. in NC2

  2. Simply quitting the app (in the hope to get an opportunity to save all) produces a popup…


    …which does not help at all, because there is no button “Save all and quit”.

Proposal: Re-add a way to batch process multiple images.

BTW: Note the mixed language dialog. (I installed NC on an admin-user account that is set to english, while my non-admin/standard user account is set to German.

Tested with NC6 on macOS 12.6.6 on iMac 2019.

doesn’t seem nik keep last filter used. but you can save all those edited filter as preset if you batch processing.

When I flip through all the images I sent to SFX, the same preset is applied to all images.

Yes, I did that, but cannot save/export the new settings to the whole batch in one click. I’d have to save each image individually - I just don’t know how, because I’ve never tried it yet.

Maybe the Niks were never intended to batch process images (they were built as plugins after all) but the functionality existed in earlier versions. Current versions (with the new UI) have killed the “save to all” function as far as I can see from my tests.

I never tried batch processing with nik standalone, was the “save all” applying your setting to all images you were batch processing? maybe they change it to “save preset” so you can one by one apply that preset or change some minus setting and that’s why they went that road. that’s interesting though, hopefully a dxo person can answer that!

Yes

No relation. Yes, I can save as preset, but I cannot apply this on exporting the batch :exploding_head: