Bizarre error message in Sharpener Pro

[Edward Louis Marit]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Today I was editing monochrom files. I recently bought the Nik collection having been impressed by SFX which I received with the MM. Am interested in sharpener pro because I print at fairly large format.

 

I edited several images using the following workflow:

 

1. Lightroom 5.6 for cropping, minor exposure adjustments

2. SFX 2 for finishing, then back to LR and:

3. Sharpener pro 3 for output sharpening

 

Everything worked fine until the last one of the day. When I tried to run it through sharpener pro I got a bizarre error message " cannot open Poland 07-2014 73 MM edit.edit.tif as the file contains a transparency"

 

After closing it I discovered it had then made an identical copy in Lightroom. I did this several times and each time I got the same message and ended up with another identical copy. So I deleted all of the superfluous copies from Lightroom and left just my original edited image.

 

Anyone have any idea what this means? What the hell is a " transparency" ?

 

Thanks for your help.

[250swb]

I've never seen anything like that before, but just as a wild guess did you flatten the image that comes out of SFX and back into Lightroom before importing it into Sharpener?

 

The reason I say it is that SFX works on a layers system which I suppose Nik may internally call a 'transparency', and I imagine Sharpener can only work on one 'flat' image, not a layered image. It of course also assumes Lightroom can deal with layered images in the same way as Photoshop, of which I have no idea at all because I don't use Lightroom.

 

Steve

[jaapv]

As far as I am aware LR does not use layers (unless you use the Perfect Layers plugin). So the thing to do is try and upload the file in Photoshop, flatten it and reload in Lightroom.It might also be a good idea to rename the file to something.tif , to get rid of the .edits.

[250swb]

But SFX does normally work in Lightroom, so an image must get flattened at some point in general use.

 

Steve

[jaapv]

That is true, possibly .something went wrong in this case. The alternative might be simply reprocessing the original file.

[k-hawinkler]

I am using LR5, CS6, and Nik to handle images.

Start out with LR5 (or ACR in CS6), pass the images to CS6 proper as smart objects.

From there one can invoke Nik functionality.

After having done that, e.g. using define, sharpening and/or silver efex pro,

one has to flatten the image before one can apply certain CS6 functionality.

When closing out a file in CS6, it automatically opens in LR5 if one started out in LR5 initially.

This process has so far worked for me flawlessly.

I have never gotten an error message.

[Edward Louis Marit]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I have CS6 but seldom use it, as being entirely self taught through books and training videos , PS is much more complicated than LR. I have not had the time to invest in learning PS properly so I tend to shy away from it.

I do have a theory on what might have gone wrong -- of the five files I worker on yesterday this was the only one in which I used the graduated filter in LR. Is it possible that this is the "transparency" in question? I might just try JAAP's suggestion of starting from scratch and reprocessing the original file without using the graduated filter and see if that works. I will try renaming the file also.

[k-hawinkler]

The latest ACR is the same in LR5 and CS6.

Of course, it has a different user interface.

So, you could open the raw file in ACR as part of CS6.

Apply the graduated filter, check the "open in smart objects" box and go into CS6 proper.

Then use the Nik functionality from within CS6.

That should work.