# HDR Efex Pro 2 not appearing in Lightroom



## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

Hello, this is my first post on these forums. This morning I downloaded the Nik Collection and, eventually, after following Google's troubleshooting suggestion to manually install, most of the Collection now appears under Photo>Edit In.

_"4. While Lightroom is still open, click Edit> Preferences OR Lightroom > Preferences.
5. Click on the "External Editing" tab at the top of preferences.
6. Midway down on the right click on the "Choose" button and locate the Nik Collection application file for your product. Typically it can be found at either, C:\Program Files\Google\Nik Collection\Viveza 2\Viveza 2.exe, OR Macintosh HD |Applications | Nik Collection | Viveza 2 | Viveza 2. For other products, replace Viveza 2 with the appropriate product.
7. Once located, select the program or application file as indicated above and click "Choose".
8. Set the file format to "TIFF", Color Space to sRGB (or the one of your choice), Bit Depth to 16-bit, Resolution to 240, and Compress to None.
9. Under Preset click the drop down selector and choose, "Save Current Settings as New Preset" from the list.
10. Type in the name of the plug-in such as"Viveza 2" and click Create."_

However, the instructions tell you not to use this method for HDR Efex Pro 2 and so I had to search for the method of doing this. The Google suggestion for this is as follows:

_"If Lightroom was installed prior to running the installer for HDR Efex Pro 2 and HDR Efex Pro 2 is not available, the Export settings within Lightroom may not be correctly enabled. In Lightroom, go to File, then Export. Next to "Export To," select Google. Then click the "Add" button under the Preset list, and title the Preset "HDR Efex Pro 2." HDR Efex Pro 2 will now be available under the Export With Preset menu."
_
However, the only choices I can see in the main "Export To" drop down box are email, hard drive and CD/DVD.

HDR Efex Pro 2 shows up with the rest of the Nik Collection under Applications in Finder so it appears to be on my system but I would be grateful if anyone could please tell me how to access it from Lightroom!


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## RogerB (Apr 10, 2016)

Right click on an image and in the pop-up menu that appears hold the mouse over "Export". A second menu should fly out, on that second menu can you see HDR Efex Pro as one of the preset options?  If not, select "Export" from the top of that menu and in the export window that appears look in the "preset" panel in the top left and see if you can see "google" there.


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## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

Thanks for this and sorry for my late reply, Roger. Unfortunately HDR Efex Pro 2 doesn't appear in that second menu and Google doesn't appear in the preset panel. I have also double-checked that it really exists on my system by clicking on the icon in Finder and it can certainly be opened but without any opened images of course.


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## RogerB (Apr 10, 2016)

In your preferences, do you have "store presets with catalog" checked? If you do, try unchecking it and then see if HDR Efex Pro appears in the export presets.


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## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

No, I looked at that earlier and unfortunately it wasn't checked so that's not the problem. By the way, I downloaded the Nik Collection in my Admin account and HDR Efex Pro 2 appears there in the Lightroom Plug-in Manager (but not in the Plug-in Manager in my normal user account) and when you click on 'Add' it takes you to Applications where you can find 'Nik Collection'. However, clicking on 'Nik Collection' brings up a menu containing all of the Collection (including HDR Efex Pro 2) but everything is greyed-out. With 'Nik Collection' selected, I tried clicking on 'Add Plug-in' but a dialogue box appears saying 'An error occurred while attempting to load this plug-in'. Everything since then has been done in my normal user account, such as the successful manual installation of all of the other parts of the Collection. Sorry that it's so complicated!


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## RogerB (Apr 10, 2016)

OK, let's see if we can get the plugin to load, from your description above I think you may be trying to load the actual application as a plug in which won't work.

Go to your admin account, where HDR Efex Pro is showing in the plugin manager.  Select HDR EfexPro in the plug-in manager, and then in the "Status" section there should be a button labelled "Show in Finder".  Click that and a Finder window should open, and in there should be a folder named "HDREfexPro2.lrplugin".  Make a note of the drive and path to that folder.

Now switch to your normal account and open LR's plug in manager. click "Add", and navigate to the folder that you made a note of above.  Select that folder (note, don't go into the folder, select the folder itself) and then click on "Select folder".  Does that add the HDR Efex plugin to LR for you?  If that works, look in the export window to see if the HDR Efex preset is now available.

If you can't get the plug in to load that way it might be a permissions issue as you installed it from your admin account.


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## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

Thanks for the suggestions but I couldn't get it to work. I clicked the "Show in Finder" button and it showed that HDR Efex Pro 2 was under the heading of "Modules" with no further details. However, the path seemed to be displayed in the Status box anyway. It gave /Users/[my name]/Library/Application Support/Lightroom/Modules/HDREfexPro2.lrplugin. Therefore I tried this in the Plug-in Manager in my normal account but I just couldn't find this exact path. I could find MacintoshHD>Users/[my name] but there was no 'Library' in the next list. Unfortunately I'm new to Apple Mac which doesn't help me to navigate! With regard to your comment on permissions, Perhaps I should try to download everything again from inside my normal user account. However, I can foresee problems with that, now that I have manually downloaded all of the others! I don't remember a point in the original, automatic download where I would have been able to select just one piece of the software. Anyway, thanks very much for all of your suggestions.


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## RogerB (Apr 10, 2016)

I use windows, not a Mac so this may be the blind leading the blind!

However, in Windows some folders can be "hidden" and they don't show up in the GUI (such as your Library folder above). In Windows I would just type in the name (Library) in the address bar and press enter and continue from there.  Give it a try and see if you can navigate to that folder, I think that will solve the problem if you can.


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## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

Thanks, any help is appreciated! I'll try your suggestion, although it might be a couple of days before I get the chance again. I'll let you know how it goes.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 10, 2016)

RogerB said:


> I use windows, not a Mac so this may be the blind leading the blind!
> 
> However, in Windows some folders can be "hidden" and they don't show up in the GUI (such as your Library folder above). In Windows I would just type in the name (Library) in the address bar and press enter and continue from there.  Give it a try and see if you can navigate to that folder, I think that will solve the problem if you can.



Correct. The user Library folder is hidden by default. Hold the Option (Alt) key and choose 'Go' menu from the Finder.


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## DrMike (Apr 10, 2016)

Thanks, Johan, I'll try that when I next get the chance.


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## RogerB (Apr 10, 2016)

DrMike said:


> Thanks, any help is appreciated! I'll try your suggestion, although it might be a couple of days before I get the chance again. I'll let you know how it goes.



OK, good luck.

A further thought - it's possible that the HDR Efex plugin folder has only been installed in your admin account user area (/Users/[my name]/Library/Application Support/Lightroom/Modules/HDREfexPro2.lrplugin).  When you manage to navigate that path in your normal account if the plugin folder is not present in .../Lightroom/Modules/ then copy the whole folder from your admin account to your normal account user area and see if you can then select it in the plugin manager.


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## DrMike (Apr 17, 2016)

Sorry for not replying before now but I have only just found time to try out your kind suggestions. Unfortunately I still couldn't get anywhere and so I just started from scratch and downloaded the whole Collection again, but this time from inside my normal user account. Everything went well and I now have the whole Collection including HDR Efex Pro 2. Fortunately there was no conflict with the parts whIch I had already downloaded last week. Thanks again to Roger and Johan.


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