Where Nik Collection Saves Your Custom Recipes (and How to Get Them Back)

Since Nik Collection 7, your custom recipes live in a single database file. On Mac, for Nik Collection 9, it’s ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection 9/data_v20.db.

That’s a big change from the individual .np recipe files the older versions used. And it simplifies protecting your recipes: back up that one file, with the Nik apps fully closed.

To move recipes between versions or machines, use each app’s built-in Export All and Import preset functions. Those still read and write .np files.

This page covers both eras: where the current versions keep recipes, how to back them up and move them, and what to check when they vanish. Further down is the original guide to rescuing recipes from Google’s free version when moving to DxO’s — that one still catches people.

A quick word on names: what Color Efex has always called recipes, the other plugins (and DxO’s documentation) mostly call presets. Same thing — a saved stack of adjustments you can reapply to other photos.

Where your recipes live in current versions (Nik Collection 7, 8 & 9)

DxO rebuilt the Nik apps from Nik Collection 7 onward, and the recipe storage changed completely. There’s no longer a UserPresets folder of individual recipe files. Instead, everything — your custom recipes, imported recipes, categories, and favorites, for all of the apps together — sits in one SQLite database file.

On my Mac, these are the actual files, one per collection version:

Nik Collection 9:  ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection 9/data_v20.db
Nik Collection 8:  ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection 8/data_v12.db
Nik Collection 7:  ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection 7/data.db

(The ~/Library folder is hidden by default; in Finder, hold Option while opening the Go menu, or use Go > Go to Folder. On Windows, I haven’t been able to verify the equivalent personally — look for a data database file under the DxO folders in your user profile’s AppData directories, and treat that file the same way.)

Backing up your recipes is now simple: copy that one file somewhere safe. Do it with all the Nik apps fully quit — more on why below.

The flip side is that deleting or replacing that file affects every Nik app at once.

There’s also a safety net worth knowing about: Nik keeps its own dated backups of the recipe database in a dbBackups folder alongside it. On my system there are around a dozen going back weeks. If your recipe database ever goes bad, that folder is a faster and more precise rollback than digging through Time Machine.

The supported way to move recipes: Export and import

For moving recipes to another computer, sharing them, or carrying them across major version upgrades, the built-in export is the way to go — it writes ordinary .np files that any recent version can import, which makes it the most version-proof format there is. Per DxO’s documentation, this applies to Nik Collection 5 and newer:

• To export (Silver Efex, Color Efex, Analog Efex, Viveza): open the Custom or Imported tab in the left panel, click the up/down arrows next to the tab label, and choose Export All. In HDR Efex, the Export all button is at the bottom of the list instead.
• To import: same spot — the arrows next to the Imported label, then Import preset. (HDR Efex uses a + icon next to Imported.) Imported recipes land in the Imported category rather than Custom.
• Dfine is the odd one out: its noise profiles are plain files you copy by hand — on Mac under ~/Library/Application Support/DxO/Dfine3/Profiles (Dfine 2 uses Dfine2), on Windows under C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\DxO\Dfine3\Profiles.

Before any major version upgrade, run Export All in each app you care about. It takes a minute, and it would have saved me some hassle below.

Upgrading versions: Check that your recipes actually made it

Installing a new Nik Collection over the previous DxO version migrates your recipes automatically — that’s DxO’s official behavior, and it mostly works. Two cautions from experience:

• It’s not perfect, though. When I compared my old version databases against Nik Collection 9’s, six recipes had silently not made the trip — four from Nik 8 and two from Nik 7, with no error or warning anywhere. If you have recipes you rely on, count them after an upgrade, and keep the old version’s database file (it’s only about 1 MB) until you’re sure.
• If you run DxO’s uninstaller, watch for the checkbox to keep custom and imported presets. Skip it and they’re gone — DxO’s support pages are explicit that they can’t recover them for you.

When your recipes seem to have vanished

I went down this exact rabbit hole recently: opened Color Efex, and the Custom and Imported categories were listed but the grid under them was empty. Every recipe, gone — apparently. If this happens to you, here’s what I learned, starting with the quickest checks:

1. An empty recipe panel does not mean an empty database. In my case, all 62 recipes were sitting safely in the database the whole time while the app showed none of them. Don’t take drastic recovery steps based on what the panel shows.
2. Check the boring causes first: a stray character in the search box, or a favorites-only view toggled on, will blank the grid while the category labels still render.
3. Fully quit and relaunch — actually quit (⌘Q on Mac), including the Nik Collection palette and any other Nik apps, not just closing the window.
4. Never restore a backup while the apps are running. This was my actual mistake. I restored the preferences folder from Time Machine while Color Efex was open — which left the app reading and writing a copy of the database that no longer existed on disk. Symptoms: blank recipe grid, and a “database error” the moment it tried to save anything. Nothing was damaged; a full quit and relaunch fixed it instantly. Quit everything Nik first, then restore.
5. If the database really is bad, restore the newest good copy from the dbBackups folder next to it (again: apps closed first), and only reach for Time Machine or another backup system after that.

Recipe storage by version: The full map

Era	Where recipes live	Format
Nik Collection 7–9 (DxO, rebuilt apps)	One database per collection version: Mac ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/Nik Collection [N]/	SQLite database (data_v20.db in v9)
Nik Collection 1–6 (DxO, classic apps)	Per-app folders: Mac ~/Library/Preferences/DxO/[App Name]/UserPresets/ · Windows C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\DxO\[App Name]\UserPresets\	Individual .np files
Google’s free version	Per-app folders: Mac ~/Library/Preferences/Google/[App Name]/UserPresets/ · Windows C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\[App Name]\UserPresets\	Individual .np files

Don’t bother copying loose .np files into a Nik Collection 7, 8, or 9 folder — the current versions won’t see them. Import them with each app’s Import preset function instead.

The original problem: Moving recipes from Google’s free version to DxO’s

This is what this page was originally about, and it still applies if you’re coming off Google’s old free Nik Collection — there are plenty of installs of it still out there.

The short history: Nik Software built these plugins, Google bought them, released them as freeware, and then abandoned them. DxO bought the collection from Google in 2017 and has been developing it as a paid product since. Upgrading from the Google version to a DxO version doesn’t bring your custom recipes along — the new install looks like a fresh start. The good news is that nothing was deleted; the new version is simply looking for recipes in a different place.

Google’s version keeps each app’s recipes in a UserPresets folder, one .np file per recipe:

Mac:      /Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Google/[App Name]/UserPresets/
Windows:  C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\[App Name]\UserPresets\

You have two routes, depending on which DxO version you’re moving to:

• Moving to Nik Collection 7, 8, or 9: use the import function — in each app, the Imported tab’s arrows > Import preset, and point it at the old .np files. Don’t bother copying folders around; the current versions don’t read them.
• Moving to Nik Collection 1–6: copy each app’s UserPresets folder from the Google location to the corresponding folder under DxO (create it if it doesn’t exist), matching the app name — per DxO’s Mac instructions (Windows version here), note that in Nik Collection 5 and 6 the destination folder name carries the newer app version — for example Google’s Color Efex Pro 4/UserPresets goes into Color Efex Pro 5/UserPresets. The Favorites folder can come across the same way. Restart the plugins and your recipes should appear, possibly alongside the defaults.

Common questions

What’s the best way to back up Nik Collection recipes?

Do both: copy the database file (data_v20.db for version 9) somewhere safe with the apps closed, and run Export All in each app you care about so you also hold plain .np files. The database copy is a perfect snapshot; the .np exports are the portable, future-proof insurance.

My recipes disappeared after upgrading. Are they gone?

Probably not. First check the search box and any favorites filter, then fully quit and relaunch. The previous version’s database usually still exists on disk too — and Nik’s own dbBackups folders hold dated copies. In my experience, the recipes usually still exist even when the app shows none of them.

Does the same process apply to Silver Efex?

Yes. Silver Efex is still its own plugin — DxO hasn’t folded it into Color Efex, though it can feel that way: since Nik Collection 7 there’s a plugin switcher for jumping between the apps, and Color Efex gained Viveza’s tone and curve controls.

Silver Efex recipes live in the same database file as everything else, and the export and import steps are the same: the Custom and Imported tabs in the left panel. On my system, its presets sit right alongside Color Efex’s in the version 9 database.

Can I share recipes with someone else?

Yes — export them (.np files) and have the other person use Import preset. That works across Mac and Windows and across recent versions.