Step three and a half: if you don’t have lightroom you can still edit the image! You’ll just need to import it directly into the program. Step three: Open the image in lightroom, right click, and scroll to “Edit In” and there you go! Step two: Install by double clicking Nik Collection There is even a button on the top right of the page that says, “Download now” Step one: Download it. <– Super duper easy. So what does all this mean? How do I use this fancy new 100% free tool? In Google’s press release they say, “As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it.” And everyone should AT THE VERY LEAST try it. Okay, now before I put my foot to far into my mouth, the reason I use the word “ actually” is because the internet is littered with free software to process raw images, but often times it will do only an adequate job or leave you with a gross watermark until you purchase. To reimport them, as before, copy the presets to your desktop, open your Nik plug-in, click on the Import button, and select the copied presets.FREE EDITING SOFTWARE! And guys, get this… holy freaking crap, it’s actually good. I haven’t got a clue why the some presets moved and others didn’t, but suffice it to say, finding them again is excellent. ~/Library/Containers//Data/Library/Preferences/Nik Software/Silver Efex Pro 2/UserPresets/ If you need to catchup, read this and this.īased on the sandboxing theory, I started digging and sure enough found the presets I was looking for. Probably the same ones I’d imported back when this exact same thing happened after the Aperture 3.4 “sandbox” upgrade.

This was kind of a Big Deal™ because I’m working on a gallery show, have been experimenting with settings, and really needed my history of saved attempts to go back on.

I just installed the “full Nik Collection” (only $126 with the ApertureExpert discount!) and much to my chagrin noticed that a collection of recent Silver Efex Pro 2 presets I’d created were missing.

Nik plugins