Nik Collection veterans

Jeff_J

Senior Member
I am new to this suite of products, and would like to know what your workflow looks like. I plan to continue to use LR and PS, but want to add in Nik’s Define and Sharpener. Most of my photos are of the boys activities (sports and other school functions). I plan on taking more landscape and wildlife in the future.

Right now I am bringing the photo into LR and immediately going out to Define and the Sharpener (Raw pre sharpen). Then once back in LR, I do the usual edits in there. The problem with this, is this creates at least 2 tif files for the two Nik edits. So now my drive has additional files.
Is there a way to reduce these files (I see this getting unmanageable long term)? Is there may be a better way to streamline this?
 

Fred Kingston_RIP

Senior Member
You can reduce them by 1...

The first edit will create/save changes to a duplicate TIF file... after that, when you edit again, simply select Edit Original (the original being the TIF file created in the first step)

You should then end up with 1 NEF file and 1 TIF file...
 
If I plan to do several different things in NIK I will just go to PhotoShop and do everything I want to do there including NIK tools and then save and go back to LR. That will reduce the number of files. Also once you finish all the edits you can delete the intermediate files.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Two things you can do.

Lr Only Solution
This one's easy. NiK cannot be set to edit an existing image, so every new invocation yields a new file. This is nice because if you do something in the first adjustment that yields an issue in the third (i.e. over sharpening yields ugly halos with minor Structure enhancements) you can go back to the step before and try again. Use Lr's Stacking feature to group your interim files together and then delete them when your done. Or just delete them as you go along.

Lr & PS Solution
Since you said you have Photoshop you can do what I do. I import into Lightroom and do basic edits there before using Nik tools. How much I do will depend on the amount of high ISO noise - the higher the ISO, the less I do. If you want to do all your Lr edits after Dfine and Sharpener Pro then...
1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Invoke Dfine which will create a new layer with the adjustment.
3. Invoke Sharpener Pro which will create a new layer with the adjustment.
4. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E (or Cmd-Opt-Shift-E on a Mac) to create a new layer from the previous layers without flattening (this allows for some level of opacity adjustment to any of the layers - otherwise just hit Ctrl/Cmd-J to duplicate the top layer).
5. In the Filter Menu choose Camera Raw Filter (this operates on the current layer and does not create a new one, which is why there's Step 4). This is exactly the same as Lightroom's develop module, though it's laid out in tabs and IMHO more difficult to navigate - particularly if you're used to Lr.
6. Do your edits as you would have in Lr.

This leaves you at the same point you would be at the end of your question above. Between step 4 & 5 above you can right-click on the new layer you created and convert it to a Smart Object. This is cool because it allows you to go back after doing the edit in Step 5 and change something. And if you invoke another Nik filter after Camera Raw it will stack it in the Smart Object and you can go back and change that filter too.

I find using the Ps engine to keep all my edits in a single file is much more convenient, even if you're not using any actual Ps features. That said, once you learn how to use layer opacity, masks and blending modes you can do so much more with what you get out of the NiK filters. One of the most revealing to me was when I used Silver Efex Pro to do a B&W conversion and then changed the Layer Blend Mode to Luminosity. Try it sometime.
 
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Jeff_J

Senior Member
I am a little getting back one this one,but I have used this information. It was greatly appreciated. In short I did the Nik edits in PS so they were all layers and then saved it out as one Psd file. I need to try the one listed by Backdoorhippie. It looks a little more work, but pays off in flexibility. Thanks everyone for their input. I love this site.
 
I am a little getting back one this one,but I have used this information. It was greatly appreciated. In short I did the Nik edits in PS so they were all layers and then saved it out as one Psd file. I need to try the one listed by Backdoorhippie. It looks a little more work, but pays off in flexibility. Thanks everyone for their input. I love this site.

Start in LR and do what you need to do there/
Then from LR open in PS and do your NIK tools there. Then flatten the image and then

JUST HIT SAVE. not save as. When you just use save it saves it and sends the saved TIFF version back to LR so it is catalogued and can be exported the way you normally do.

This keeps all your edits in Lightroom so you can go back to any level.
 

Jeff_J

Senior Member
Don- I will definitely will give that a try. I knew there had to be a better way to do this. Thanks everyone for the help.
 
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