As a result, you may see a slow-down in the development of alternatives. And I agree with his assessment – people will go out, download and use the Nik collection.īut in the meantime, other companies like OnOne and Topaz will struggle to fund their development of new features, because users now have a free alternative to a paid product, and it is hard to compete against “free”. He did not only analyze the value of each of the modules in the Nik collection, he also spends some thoughts on how this move by Google will affect the other players in the plugin market. Reading more about this on the Internet, I came across Thom Hogans’s article Nik Collection Now Free. And this will be the end of the story, because Google will no longer provide any support. So, at some point in the future, the Nik collection will stop working because of an incompatibility with Lightroom, Photoshop or your new operating system. Google knows that the future of photography are smartphones, and they will continue to focus on that area. Just bug fixes and the addition of Analog Efex (which was probably already in the pipeline when Google acquired Nik). And while Snapseed was developed further and further, the Nik collection did not see any major development. Snapseed is a solution to process and enhance your pictures on a mobile phone. The real reason they acquired Nik was Snapseed. So – why I am posting this under “Commentaries” and not under “News”? 1.The future of the Nik collectionĪt first sight, this seems to be good news for us photographers, right? A very capable suite of plugins available for free, there is not a lot to complain about, right?īut then, you might have followed Googles approach of acquiring companies and products for purely strategic reasons. You can download your copy on the Nik homepage. And a few days ago, Google announced that they are giving away the complete suite for free. In March 2013, I reported that after taking over Nik, Google was selling the complete suite for 149 USD and you were able to get it for even less.

Initially priced at 499 USD, a single plugin like Silver Efex Pro was more expensive than Lightroom at that time.

I guess every photographer using Lightroom or Photoshop did at some point look at the Nik collection, a suite of plugins to cover specific requirements.

Nik plugins