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Google Nik collection now available for free

217 points by Numberwang 11y ago

dergachev 11y ago
See https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/4bsn5a/google_are_now_offering_their_nik_collection/ https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/4bsn5a/google_...
- SyneRyder 11y ago
  Worth looking at for the mention of folks obtaining refunds outside of the advertised period. Only offering refunds to customers in the last 2.5 months seems rough, but it appears that if you contact Google they're offering refunds up to about a year ago.
barney54 11y ago
This is a real bummer because it implies they are done developing it. I bought the Nik Collection a couple years ago and I have gotten good value out of the product. I hoped they would continue to improve it. If you like photography should should definitely download it.
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  I always thought it was a slightly odd acquisition for Google. Didn't seem like it would really fit with Photos use case, and I suspect, sadly, that you are right.
  - iamcreasy 11y ago
    Couldn't they add it to Picasa?
    - pgodzin 11y ago
      Picasa is dead, Google Photos is the primary photo product
      - gfody 11y ago
        Such a travesty. Someday we will look back and see the whole web application trend as a technological plague that wiped out great native desktop applications replacing them with inferior web versions that nobody actually wanted.
        themartorana 11y ago
        Google Photos is amazing, superior, and everything I've wanted for years. Seriously.
        _delirium 11y ago
        I don't hate it, but a big problem for me is that the editing seems to produce quite low-quality output, at least in the Android app (maybe it's better if you use the web version?). For the use-case of cropping/editing photos and sharing low-res versions on Twitter it's not very noticeable, but I was very surprised when I looked at one of my edited photos in higher res and it had a bunch of really grating artifacts, that weren't in either the original, or a similar edit reproduced in gimp.
        guelo 11y ago
        You obviously haven't tried to paginate quickly browsing through thousands of photos.
        gfody 11y ago
        I couldn't disagree with you more, Google Photos is garbage compared to Picasa. There's no folders and no tags (for writing a quick description that applies to a bunch of pictures), no manual face tagging (for when the magic fails, or tagging pets, or tagging people that were there but not in the photo, or just tagging things that aren't faces), no people pane (where you can select two or more people to quickly see all the photos of them together), no batch editing of any kind really, no bulk mechanism to give your feedback to the facial recognition engine to help it learn (did Google Photos perfect that technology? Is that why it doesn't need our help anymore? No. It just misses half the faces Picasa would've caught) In lieu of these basic requirements, Photos presumes to be able to create collages automatically for me (sure put all those pictures that are basically identical together) and albums (oh yes call that one "Trip to California" it's not like I don't fucking live in California). Not to mention all of this is happening in a browser that is clearly sweating to scroll hundreds of thumbnails across my screen where Picasa would effortlessly zoom and resize on the fly. I honestly don't see how Photos could ever deliver a superior user experience to Picasa without first abandoning the idea that it's all going to happen in a browser. I'm also curious what your use-case is that Photos is actually superior to Picasa in your opinion, are you a heavy user?
  - adrianmacneil 11y ago
    I think the whole team was used to build out the Google Plus (now Google Photos) product (which has pretty awesome/fun editing features so far). So, honestly I'm impressed that they have kept supporting Nik Collection this long already. Even a couple years ago when I bought this software, it was pretty obvious that it was mostly abandonware and Google weren't planning on improving/adding any new features any time soon.
zeveb 11y ago
Only supports Macs & Windows, sadly.
- mnx 11y ago
  Not surprising, given they are for photoshop.
r1ch 11y ago
Never heard of these. How do they compare to Lightroom's built in features?
- 2color 11y ago
  Also interested to hear
- joegyoung 11y ago
  it is not a lightroom replacement nor a photoshop one. It has really good filters. my wife and bought it.
- micampe 11y ago
  I only used Silver Efex. It's more flexible and powerful than basic Lightroom and more specialized than Photoshop. It's great for black and white work, it is a tool specifically made for photography, not a general purpose one.
- mozumder 11y ago
  I've had them since v.1. They're the best photo filters by far. Very usable.
- bbgm 11y ago
  They are complementary. I use the suite with Lightroom all the time. In general I find them super easy to use and they get me the results I want.
- aurelius12 11y ago
  Lightroom is both an editor and a photo management collection tool. The Nik collection is editor only.
adrianmacneil 11y ago
Awesome! I really like their HDR tool, although it was pretty much the only one I used. For anyone interested in the history, this product was the result of an acquisition by Google (I think they wanted the team for their Google+ Photos product). While they don't seem interested in developing it further, it's nice that they continue to make the software available. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Software [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/google-buys-nik-to-lure-photographers-to-google-plus/?_r=1 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/google-buys-nik-to-...
bribri 11y ago
Hoping for Google Photos integration...
- stan_rogers 11y ago
  That would require a lot of work. There are parts, at least, of the Nik collection that use deep hooks into Photoshop; it's not just a set of typical 8BA/8BF "give me a pointer to a TIFF I can play with" plugins.
  - shagen 11y ago
    This didn't happen in the last years. I doubt it will happen at all. I think they're more interested in the algorithms to reuse them in Google Apps the one or the other way.
Gratsby 11y ago
The Nikon Collection was a significant piece of software - it used to be a pretty penny for all of them too. It was much more productive than photoshop, and did some things that just aren't easy to do in PS. I don't know how google got a hold of it, but it's a great thing for photographers.
salimmadjd 11y ago
Google acquired Nik for their mobile photo app Snapped in 2012 [1] They got the Nik software along with it. At the time each of the tools were sold separately for $100-some (don't exactly remember). Eventually google combined them and priced them together as one package. Today they decided to give it away for free. As someone else mentioned, it's unclear if it means google will stop developing it or if they opened it up to get more users and use it as a research tool to gather more data on type of filters users use and how they use them. So eventually to apply that to some type of automated filtering solution for android and/or Google photos. [1] http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/ http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/
clumsysmurf 11y ago
Its probably not a coincidence, that this appeared on the front page the same day "Google parent Alphabet ushers in ‘fiscal discipline era’ (usatoday.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357131
jestar_jokin 11y ago
Any idea if this could work with GIMP using something like the "GIMP PSPI plugin"?
Hopka 11y ago
Do you need Photoshop or Lightroom to use these tools or do they work standalone as well? I can't find this info on the website at all.
- _ati 11y ago
  These can be run standalone also (atleast on windows not sure about mac though)
  - dcuthbertson 11y ago
    I don't understand how you can run standalone. I just installed it on Windows 10. The only executable is the uninstaller. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Lightroom (or Photoshop, maybe?) is needed to use the Nik Collection.
    - MikeTV 11y ago
      If you dig into the folders there are more executables. They work as Paint Shop Pro add-ins, too.
thenomad 11y ago
This seems like the rare case where a more descriptive title would really help this item. I nearly didn't click on it, because I had no idea it was relevant to one of my major interests, photography.
- dave2000 11y ago
  Looks horrific. Tragic over sharpening, crossed with HDR. Best avoided unless you're into instagram filters to disguise cheap phone camera based photography.
roddux 11y ago
Who else had no idea Google worked on photography software? I'm not surprised, given the breadth of their investments but this is the first I've heard of it.
- nek4life 11y ago
  They bought Nik Software a while back. This probably means they are done with the software collection and do not plan on making any updates to it.
sandra_saltlake 11y ago
The Nik collection is editor
bwang29 11y ago
Oh Crap, now they're probably going to make other individual developer who'e looking for monetizing their apps harder (discloser, I work for Polarr). The only good news for competitor here is that if Google decides to drop further development of it, then the opportunity to emulate and eventually surpass Nik's functionality is huge as well.

217 points by Numberwang 11y ago

See https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/4bsn5a/google_are_now_offering_their_nik_collection/ https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/4bsn5a/google_...

SyneRyder 11y ago
Worth looking at for the mention of folks obtaining refunds outside of the advertised period. Only offering refunds to customers in the last 2.5 months seems rough, but it appears that if you contact Google they're offering refunds up to about a year ago.

barney54 11y ago

This is a real bummer because it implies they are done developing it. I bought the Nik Collection a couple years ago and I have gotten good value out of the product. I hoped they would continue to improve it. If you like photography should should definitely download it.

FireBeyond 11y ago
I always thought it was a slightly odd acquisition for Google. Didn't seem like it would really fit with Photos use case, and I suspect, sadly, that you are right.
- iamcreasy 11y ago
  Couldn't they add it to Picasa?
  - pgodzin 11y ago
    Picasa is dead, Google Photos is the primary photo product
    - gfody 11y ago
      Such a travesty. Someday we will look back and see the whole web application trend as a technological plague that wiped out great native desktop applications replacing them with inferior web versions that nobody actually wanted.
      - themartorana 11y ago
        Google Photos is amazing, superior, and everything I've wanted for years. Seriously.
        _delirium 11y ago
        I don't hate it, but a big problem for me is that the editing seems to produce quite low-quality output, at least in the Android app (maybe it's better if you use the web version?). For the use-case of cropping/editing photos and sharing low-res versions on Twitter it's not very noticeable, but I was very surprised when I looked at one of my edited photos in higher res and it had a bunch of really grating artifacts, that weren't in either the original, or a similar edit reproduced in gimp.
        guelo 11y ago
        You obviously haven't tried to paginate quickly browsing through thousands of photos.
        gfody 11y ago
        I couldn't disagree with you more, Google Photos is garbage compared to Picasa. There's no folders and no tags (for writing a quick description that applies to a bunch of pictures), no manual face tagging (for when the magic fails, or tagging pets, or tagging people that were there but not in the photo, or just tagging things that aren't faces), no people pane (where you can select two or more people to quickly see all the photos of them together), no batch editing of any kind really, no bulk mechanism to give your feedback to the facial recognition engine to help it learn (did Google Photos perfect that technology? Is that why it doesn't need our help anymore? No. It just misses half the faces Picasa would've caught) In lieu of these basic requirements, Photos presumes to be able to create collages automatically for me (sure put all those pictures that are basically identical together) and albums (oh yes call that one "Trip to California" it's not like I don't fucking live in California). Not to mention all of this is happening in a browser that is clearly sweating to scroll hundreds of thumbnails across my screen where Picasa would effortlessly zoom and resize on the fly. I honestly don't see how Photos could ever deliver a superior user experience to Picasa without first abandoning the idea that it's all going to happen in a browser. I'm also curious what your use-case is that Photos is actually superior to Picasa in your opinion, are you a heavy user?
- adrianmacneil 11y ago
  I think the whole team was used to build out the Google Plus (now Google Photos) product (which has pretty awesome/fun editing features so far). So, honestly I'm impressed that they have kept supporting Nik Collection this long already. Even a couple years ago when I bought this software, it was pretty obvious that it was mostly abandonware and Google weren't planning on improving/adding any new features any time soon.

zeveb 11y ago

Only supports Macs & Windows, sadly.

mnx 11y ago
Not surprising, given they are for photoshop.

r1ch 11y ago

Never heard of these. How do they compare to Lightroom's built in features?

2color 11y ago
Also interested to hear
joegyoung 11y ago
it is not a lightroom replacement nor a photoshop one. It has really good filters. my wife and bought it.
micampe 11y ago
I only used Silver Efex. It's more flexible and powerful than basic Lightroom and more specialized than Photoshop. It's great for black and white work, it is a tool specifically made for photography, not a general purpose one.
mozumder 11y ago
I've had them since v.1. They're the best photo filters by far. Very usable.
bbgm 11y ago
They are complementary. I use the suite with Lightroom all the time. In general I find them super easy to use and they get me the results I want.
aurelius12 11y ago
Lightroom is both an editor and a photo management collection tool. The Nik collection is editor only.

adrianmacneil 11y ago

Awesome! I really like their HDR tool, although it was pretty much the only one I used. For anyone interested in the history, this product was the result of an acquisition by Google (I think they wanted the team for their Google+ Photos product). While they don't seem interested in developing it further, it's nice that they continue to make the software available. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Software [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/google-buys-nik-to-lure-photographers-to-google-plus/?_r=1 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/google-buys-nik-to-...

bribri 11y ago

Hoping for Google Photos integration...

stan_rogers 11y ago
That would require a lot of work. There are parts, at least, of the Nik collection that use deep hooks into Photoshop; it's not just a set of typical 8BA/8BF "give me a pointer to a TIFF I can play with" plugins.
- shagen 11y ago
  This didn't happen in the last years. I doubt it will happen at all. I think they're more interested in the algorithms to reuse them in Google Apps the one or the other way.

Gratsby 11y ago

The Nikon Collection was a significant piece of software - it used to be a pretty penny for all of them too. It was much more productive than photoshop, and did some things that just aren't easy to do in PS. I don't know how google got a hold of it, but it's a great thing for photographers.

salimmadjd 11y ago

Google acquired Nik for their mobile photo app Snapped in 2012 [1] They got the Nik software along with it. At the time each of the tools were sold separately for $100-some (don't exactly remember). Eventually google combined them and priced them together as one package. Today they decided to give it away for free. As someone else mentioned, it's unclear if it means google will stop developing it or if they opened it up to get more users and use it as a research tool to gather more data on type of filters users use and how they use them. So eventually to apply that to some type of automated filtering solution for android and/or Google photos. [1] http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/ http://mashable.com/2012/09/17/google-acquires-snapseed/

clumsysmurf 11y ago

Its probably not a coincidence, that this appeared on the front page the same day "Google parent Alphabet ushers in ‘fiscal discipline era’ (usatoday.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357131

jestar_jokin 11y ago

Any idea if this could work with GIMP using something like the "GIMP PSPI plugin"?

Hopka 11y ago

Do you need Photoshop or Lightroom to use these tools or do they work standalone as well? I can't find this info on the website at all.

_ati 11y ago
These can be run standalone also (atleast on windows not sure about mac though)
- dcuthbertson 11y ago
  I don't understand how you can run standalone. I just installed it on Windows 10. The only executable is the uninstaller. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Lightroom (or Photoshop, maybe?) is needed to use the Nik Collection.
  - MikeTV 11y ago
    If you dig into the folders there are more executables. They work as Paint Shop Pro add-ins, too.

thenomad 11y ago

This seems like the rare case where a more descriptive title would really help this item. I nearly didn't click on it, because I had no idea it was relevant to one of my major interests, photography.

dave2000 11y ago
Looks horrific. Tragic over sharpening, crossed with HDR. Best avoided unless you're into instagram filters to disguise cheap phone camera based photography.

roddux 11y ago

Who else had no idea Google worked on photography software? I'm not surprised, given the breadth of their investments but this is the first I've heard of it.

nek4life 11y ago
They bought Nik Software a while back. This probably means they are done with the software collection and do not plan on making any updates to it.

sandra_saltlake 11y ago

The Nik collection is editor

bwang29 11y ago

Oh Crap, now they're probably going to make other individual developer who'e looking for monetizing their apps harder (discloser, I work for Polarr). The only good news for competitor here is that if Google decides to drop further development of it, then the opportunity to emulate and eventually surpass Nik's functionality is huge as well.