# Nik Software Plugins



## DaveV (Mar 29, 2008)

Just read that Nik software is developing plug-ins for Aperture. Are they coming to Lightroom as well? ! This would be a major selling point seeing that many photographers already use these in photoshop.

There's also a Dodge/Burn Plugin from apple which I'm coveting!


Does anyone have any news on official Develop Plugins from big Companies?


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 29, 2008)

The SDK, for other developers to add to LR, is limited to just export at the moment, as the main program itself is still changing so rapidly.  Once the main development settles down, we should see a full SDK for other developers to start adding things.  That said, it would be even nicer if some of those functions were included in LR itself rather than having to pay another developer for them!


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## rcannonp (Mar 29, 2008)

Victoria Bampton said:


> That said, it would be even nicer if some of those functions were included in LR itself rather than having to pay another developer for them!



Yeah, it would be great to get Viveza functionality for LR and not have to pay another $25'. If such things do come about, I hope they at least have some sort of crossgrade program.


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## jimburgess (Mar 29, 2008)

To gain some insight into Aperture's plug-in architecture, take a look at Rob Galbraith's story about Aperture 2.1 at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-93'8-9356. Especially read the section about how it is implemented and used in the Aperture workflow. It's similar to LR's current approach of round-tripping to PS to make adjustments, and Galbraith does a great job of exploring the pros and cons of the approach. If you haven't seen it yet, there's also a discussion on the Adobe LR Forum at http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b4d563/8 about Aperture 2.1.

So what's all this have to do with LR? I think it shows the difficulties in developing and implementing a plug-in architecture that fits within the existing LR architecture of non-destructive editing. The two don't always mesh, and to come up with something usable and functional will take some time.


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## Brad Snyder (Mar 29, 2008)

jimburgess said:


> I think it shows the difficulties in developing and implementing a plug-in architecture that fits within the existing LR architecture of non-destructive editing. The two don't always mesh, and to come up with something usable and functional will take some time.



Yes, the "non-destructiveness" (I just 'nounified' that adjective :roll of LR is the key to both its power and the difficulty of the task. Pixel bashing is fairly easy. Developing a forward/backward compatable metadata schema is another thing.


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## rcannonp (Mar 29, 2008)

Brad Snyder said:


> Yes, the "non-destructiveness" (I just 'nounified' that adjective :roll of LR is the key to both its power and the difficulty of the task. Pixel bashing is fairly easy. Developing a forward/backward compatable metadata schema is another thing.



They've already started including that sort of thing in Photoshop with smart filters. That's what really sold me on the Viveza plugin. Since it can work as a smart filter you can open a raw file as a smart object and apply a lot of changes without adding layers or altering the pixels. I guess that to put this sort of thing into LR they would have to figure out a way to store this in the catalog instead of the actual file. It doesn't seem impossible though. They've already included basic cloning and healing in LR.


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## ernie (Mar 29, 2008)

Boy, Viveza really looks like a neat piece of software. But I was wondering something. If/when we get the ability to make selections in LR, wouldn't that coupled with the HSL adjustment be very close to what Viveza does?


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## Braders (Mar 29, 2008)

I don't want plugins and SDK's....

I want to be talking about such things as sharpening, noise red, dodge and burn in a context that these are quality features within LR that involve develop changes to the RAW/DNG file, without a need to export to PS, editing pixels as a Tiff.


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