Workflow Update

In an earlier review I wrote about including Nik Software into my photography workflow.  

The core of my work flow is the application Lightroom, which provides editing capabilities and importantly a data base to help organize and index my collection.  Lightroom’s editing capabilities are termed “non-destructive” meaning that changes don’t modify the original image, they are applied as “layers” and built up to create the final result. There are two benefits here: first, changes can be un-done just like in a word processor, either in part or completely.  Second, there is a record of all the changes applied meaning that if you want to comeback another day, week, month or year later and pick up where you were and add to, back track and edit  (i.e., tinker) you can.

Nik, on the other hand is “destructive” meaning all change layers are flattened and applied directly to the original when saved.  No chance to come back later and tweak.  

Except, all the Nik products I use have the ability to package all changes made into a custom filter (Color Efex Pro calls them Recipes) . Furthermore, these custom filters can be saved to disk. With that it is possible to simulate the  capabilities of Lightroom.  For example:

1. Edit picture in Nik Color Efex Pro
2. Save changes (layers) as a Recipe
3. Save Recipe to disk. My convention is to [1] save the file in the same directory as the original [2] use the same filename as the original photograph plus suffix it with the name of the Nik program (e.g., CEP for Color Efex; SEP for Silver Efex, etc.)
4. Remove Recipe from the Nik Custom Recipe folder. This is because this folder will quickly become unmanageable after a few hundred pictures …
5. To recreate, load the original pre-Nik-processed image and apply the the saved recipe to the image. Since these are now layers (and thus non-destructuve until saved) they can be changed, added to, etc.