Thanks, y'all.
To the first question, I'm not sure if they're any better. I'm just trying them out and I can't profess any expertise in photo manip. Jury's still out.
To Null54, I'm sorry if I stepped on toes. I honestly didn't know what the issue was. Really, I was thinking that, because nik seemed to be geared toward commercial programs like lightroom or photoshop, they hadn't worried about other usage contexts like pdn. I was really just looking for anyone else who had had experience with the collection to learn from them. Besides, I'm so amateurish in my work that I didn't know if the problem lay with something I was doing.
In any case thanks again for your time.