Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine — do those ring a bell? They’re the Nik Collection, and now Google is making these seven desktop plugins available to everyone, for free. Silver Efex Pro is certainly among the class-leading editing applications to master the art of black-and-white photography with darkroom-inspired controls. Or longing for that analog look and feel? Explore Analog Efex Pro to imitate classic cameras, films and lenses.
Great news. So far, I haven’t found anything better for black-and-white conversions than Silver Efex. Originally valued at around $500, Google acquired Nik Software in 2012 and sold the whole collection for $149. Now it’s free. Kind of highlights the difficult environment the whole industry is in. Darwinian fight for survival, in many cases only those who can tap other financial sources remain relevant. Wonder what DxO makes of this move?
The bad beside the good? Further development of the plugin collection is likely to be discontinued. Maybe integrated into Google Photos. Get your hands on it while you can.
Writes Google on the Nik Collection site:
Photo enthusiasts all over the world use the Nik Collection to get the best out of their images every day. As we continue to focus our longterm investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it.
The Nik Collection is comprised of seven desktop plugins that provide a powerful range of photo editing capabilities — from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.
Starting March 24, 2016, the latest Nik Collection will be freely available to download: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll automatically issue back to you in the coming days.
We’re excited to bring the powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people now.
Nik Collection is available as Mac and Windows Photoshop plugin.
