Help with using Nik Collection with the new Affinity Studio?

[Flycaster]

Just as I was trying to learn Affinity Photo 2.6.5, along came Affinity by Canva, Of course, I downloaded it and was advised, although I'm only interested in photo editing, that I should continue on with the Affinity because its Studio will have the same power as AP2, be available for updates, and if I wan to subscribe, I can get AI functions. I'm essentially coming from PSE 2020 and 2025, although I never really got into layers with either one. I have successfully load Nik Collection 7 N7) onto Affinity, but just can't figure out (after much Googling) to get to N7...I can't even get to it? So, I'd appreciate some set-by-step guidance. I can open up an image in Pixel and that's about it. Thanks.

 

[Glen Barrington]

I don't think it can be done.

This has severely limited Affinity's utility for me. I guess Canva doesn't want a 3rd party AI potential to develop. I've been bouncing between ON1 2025 and ACDSee for Mac 11. I prefer the UI of ACDSee and I think it's raw performance is superior to ON1 (ON1 is still very good, but I like ACDSee better.). ACDsee is a bit more timid when it comes to AI than ON1. It's moving much more slowly

Both have roughly similar DAMs though neither is as good as ACDSee for Windows apps which some titles actually come with a pretty good layers based editor.

Either will accept plugin tools, and both can serve as a front end DAM for Affinity, though neither can display the Affinity working files with the '*.af' suffix.

But if I've got to use either for using the plugin tools, or export a file from Affinity, and use the plugins as stand alone apps, I might use Affinity for a bit, but I'm going to keep looking for a decent bit mapped editor.

 

[GusPanella]

I have NIK collection 7, it works fine as a plugin with Affinity 2.6nn and the new Affinity 3 (from Canva)

First...
Settings > Photoshop Plugins > [Select NIK folder where plugins are located]

Affinity will need a restart.

Upon restart there is an extra menu item located at:
Pixel > Filters > Plugins > NIK Collection 7

 

[lacogada]

I have successfully load Nik Collection 7 N7) onto Affinity, but just can't figure out (after much Googling) to get to N7...I can't even get to it? So, I'd appreciate some set-by-step guidance.

May find this 9 min video helpful. I think the part you need starts at approx 4:30 mark.

 

[Impressive Instinct]

I loaded Nik Collection 7 into Affinity 3 and it's fine EXCEPT the bottom section is missing. The one that has the Cancel and Apply buttons, which makes it useless. In AF2 it's perfect as in DxO PhotoLab. Any ideas. Do other users have this problem?

 

[Glen Barrington]

Nope! I can not get it to work with Nic 8. At least on my Mac Mini m4. All my windows machines have been converted to Linux mint. I'm a Win11 refugee.

And, more importantly for me, I can't get it to launch Topaz Photo OR Topaz Photo AI. I've already seen this video, it is what renewed my interest in the Nic tools.

Whatever changed in either Nic 8, or Affinity over Affinity Photos has not been adequately tested by "somebody". For Raw development, I am using ACDSee for Mac 11 as it can invoke plugins and external editors. I am on the lookout for a good Layers based editor. ACDSee's Editor is not available in Mac versions. But the Windows one is quite good.

ACDSee is quite conservative when it comes to the Mac (They are primarily a Windows shop). But maybe this will give them an incentive to step up the pace.

 

[Flycaster]

Although the video was an older one, it did trigger my discovering the solution to my problem. Thanks. First off, the video did confirm that I had loaded the Nik Collection on correctly. And, that was a particular bug for me, because I was pretty sure that the collection was already properly loaded, but I just couldn't use it because I couldn't find it in A3. More specifically, I knew (from Google research,) that the collection would be under Filters. But, and that is a big "but," even though I opened an image in Pixels, Filters was no where to be found in the menu. As hard as I tried, I couldn't find Filters anywhere. However, the video did indicate that Filters was subbed under Pixels in the menu...and that is where Nik was: Pixel>Filters>Plugin>Nik Collection 7. BTW, I just put the bottle of Valium away.