PSE6 and plug ins

[andronicus707]

I have been having some problems with adding plug ins to PSE6 and tried the Adobe online help section but can't seem to find what I need...so I thought I'd ask here.
I received my purchased copy of Nik Silver Effex. I installed the disk and went through the installation okay. It found Elements 6 and installed in Photoshop/Elements6/Plugins. When I opened Photoshop Elements 6 There was nothing in the Filters menu. I uninstalled Silver Effex and reinstalled in case something went wrong, but still to no avail because I can not get Silver Effex into Photoshop. Or if it is there somewhere I can't find it.
When I go to the "Help>about Plugins" Silver Effex is listed there. In the Filters drop down menu there is a listing for Nik Software but it is "grayed out" and there is nothing there. Actually, I have a couple of other filters that I'm having problems with too. A couple went in okay and are listed in "Filters" like they're supposed to but 3 of my add ons just won't work right. Do you have any advice? And/or do you know where I could go to get help?
Thanks!

[Jeff Perry]

Have you loaded up an image file, or at least a new blank file? Silver Efex should be found under Filters>Nik Software.

Jeff

[andronicus707]

yes I loaded a photo...but still nothing. It may be right under my nose but I just can't seem to get it. I've been doing basic work with Elements for a while now, and am pretty good with it, but I just started working with filters and now I'm having problems!

[andronicus707]

I got it to work! I loaded a different image than the image I had been using for the last couple of days. Now I'm wondering if the first image had the ability to prevent any editing on it? It had been heavily edited by a friend of mine...where the image that I just loaded was just a casual shapshot that was untouched.
Thanks! for your help!

[Jeff Perry]

In some cases, certain plug-ins and even Elements built in functions will not work if an image has certain Mode characteristics. That could have been the problem. For instance, under Image>Mode menu the general default is RGB Color. Change an RGB color mode to Indexed Color and 90% of your filters, including NIK's plug-ins, go brain dead, and are grayed out. Compare your two images by checking the Mode settings.

Jeff