Google acquired Nik Software back in 2012. Nik Software is known for their very popular mobile photo editing app, Snapseed which is available on both Android and iOS. Nik Software has plenty of other software though, besides Snapseed. They have a number of programs that are bundled in the Nik Collection, these include: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efect Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. After Google acquired Nik Software in 2012, they dropped the price of this bundle from $499 to $149, and beginning today, it’s going to be free. It seems that Google is more interested in promoting and focusing on their Photos app than making revenue from these 7 software programs that are part of the Nik Collection.
For photography enthusiasts and professionals, this is a pretty big deal. You see these programs can work as individual programs or work as plugins for Adobe’s uber popular Photoshop or Lightroom apps. The Nik Collection is full of adding filters, as well as editing pictures to make them sharper, redesign noise and much more. Perhaps everyone’s favorite is the HDR effects that come from HDR Efex Pro. All of these features are also part of Snapseed for Android – plus much more – so if you’d like to get this kind of editing done on pictures taken with your smartphone, you can do so with the free Snapseed app.
In the Google+ post from Nik Collection, they also noted that if you bought the collection in 2016, you will be receiving a refund for your purchase. Nik Collection notes that the refund process will be automatic and you should be seeing the refund in the “coming days”.
If you haven’t given these programs from Nik Software a go yet, and you use Adobe’s Photoshop or Lightroom, it’s definitely worth checking out. While the majority of them are filter plugins – which have become a pretty popular thing as of late – it’s still worth trying considering it’s completely free now. You can download the entire collection by hitting up the source link below. It’s available for both Mac and Windows, and the entire collection weighs in at about 590MB.