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Google's $149 Nik Photo Editing Suite Goes Free

Posted by msmash on from the this-should-make-me-a-good-photographer dept.

Google has announced that it is making its $149 Nik Collection photo editing suite available for free of charge. The move, which should make plenty of amateur and professional photographers happy, comes roughly three and a half years after Google acquired Nik Software. The suite includes seven desktop plugins and allows you to add effects and apply filters to your photos. Those of you who had purchased Nik Software, the company assures that it will issue a full refund. In a blog post, the company writes: As we continue to focus our long-term 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.

16 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Motive by OverlordQ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, they dont want to support or develop it any more and now they can point to the Free price tag for justification.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Motive by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      Spare us your bullying attitude. They are giving away their opinions for no fucking money. Don't like it? Fuck off elsewhere and find something else to bitch about. Many people agree with them. And for your information, the price doesn't change who is entitled to have their own opinion, or state it.

  2. When is it discontinued? by spyfrog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, the obvious question now is "when is it discontinued"?
    Because that seam to be the ultimate end for most of Googles projects. Especially these who isn't cloud related, like this. I would be surprised if this isn't killed of within 5 years.

    For instance, they have only recently killed of the desktop Picasa application - a really good and free solution to organize your pictures. And now they want us to use other software that probably will be discontinued in the future whey you rely on it?

    1. Re:When is it discontinued? by EvilSS · · Score: 2

      So, the obvious question now is "when is it discontinued"?

      Pretty sure that would be today. I see this as Google setting it out on the curb with a "free" sign on it. Shame they won't open source it.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  3. Bah - they're just plugins, and no Linux. by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is cool and all, but for those who don't read TFS (let alone TFA), you may want to look at the requirements (bottom of page), and you'll discover that you will need either Photoshop of some flavor installed (no effing way I'm coughing up money to Adobe for just a hobby), or Aperture for OSX.

    BTW, no love for GIMP? dafuq?

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Bah - they're just plugins, and no Linux. by spyfrog · · Score: 2

      Continue to read and you will realize that there isn't going to be any more releases for desktop versions. So it is a dead end. Like Picasa before it...

    2. Re:Bah - they're just plugins, and no Linux. by bmo · · Score: 5, Informative

      > Photoshop of some flavor installed (no effing way I'm coughing up money to Adobe for just a hobby)

      It's called CS2.

      Create Adobe account
      Lie and say you already bought CS2
      Be brought to the download page
      Download. Input free key supplied from Adobe.

      ???

      Slight Profit. It's good enough for hobbyist work - it doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles (no video card acceleration, etc). But hey, it's free-beer free.

      >no love for Gimp

      Install PSPI in Gimp.

      http://the-tml.net/gimp/pspi.h...

      I love Gimp and am kinda proficient at it, but then also, CS2 runs great in Wine.

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      BMO

    3. Re:Bah - they're just plugins, and no Linux. by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 2

      CS2 won't help here, the earliest release supported by these plugins is CS4.

      Windows Requirements ( mostly the same as Mac except Mac is only supported 10.7.5 - 10.10 ) :
      Windows Vista®, Windows 7, Windows 8
      Adobe Photoshop CS4 through CC 2015
      Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 through 13 (apart from HDR Efex Pro 2, which is not compatible with Photoshop Elements)
      Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 through 6/CC

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    4. Re:Bah - they're just plugins, and no Linux. by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      Gimp has a better programming interface than Photoshop (and already did in the 90s!) and there is a flourishing plugin community.

      There is no reason to try to sell them plugins in the first place to need to make it free later. ;)

  4. Opportunity by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Likely. However, as a photographer and image processing professional, I can vouch for both Viveza and DFine. Both are worthy of use in many situations. The rest aren't much, IMHO, but those two are exceptionally useful as often as not.

    Viveza is a somewhat-automatic region selecting modifier of basic image characteristics such as contrast, saturation and so on.

    Dfine is a reasonably effective noise reduction tool.

    Perfect, no, and I rather see them further developed as opposed to abandoned, as is quite possible due to Google's well known habit, but as they stand now, better to have them in the imaging toolbox than not.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Opportunity by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

      Neither one precludes or reduces the quality of the other. And I assure you -- you can't do by hand what Viveza does by algorithm in any reasonably comparable length of time. I'm talking many, many hours to seconds. It's not just region selection. It's region selection with smart integration with other region selection, all of it cued to the varying characteristics of the region. It's like using a continuously variable region-to-region feather, along with a control-point-sensitive color key that does color and tone at the same time, while applying multiple types of non-destructive changes, which you can then drag around and the whole blinking thing re-calculates live.

      On second thought, you can't do this by hand at all.

      Look, I absolutely sympathize with skill building. I am very into photography, plus I have spent 20 years writing image processing algorithms, complex area selection tools, and unique (and all the standard) image layer modes. 70+ distinct modes to date. Non-destructive image modification is my specific "thing." I have to say that from my POV, Viveza is something I can't dismiss as "just another thingamajig I can replace with X series of by-hand operations. Could I do without it? Sure. But really, I wouldn't, given the choice. In fact, should it go away, I think I'd re-create it (and enhance it, heh) just for my own use. Only it wouldn't be a plug-in; I'd stick it right in my own software as an always-there and no-need-to-export-import tool.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    2. Re:Opportunity by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      You can't do it by hand "at all" because you define "it" as being automated.

      I don't doubt that the tool is indispensable for you in your work flow. I've been doing photography since I was old enough to heft the camera. I started writing image processing tools in the 90s. It isn't my main work, but I do understand the tools.

      And I already understood the tools and types of algorithm when I said I'd rather do it by hand; I get good results. I don't finish and say, gosh, I just wasn't able to get that select the way I wanted. And that includes when it is complex; there are other ways to do it. There are in fact ways to paint the selection, and then merge those. The feature names are different in different apps, so I'm trying to stay generic in description.

      And in gimp if I need to base something on a calculation, there is a Perl interface and I can easily calculate and apply something by hand from a command line.

      Also, in my experience the longer you use a tool, the more you need it because you're used to doing it that way. That's why I think FLOSS evangelism is somewhat misplaced. People will only give alternatives a serious chance if they think their existing tool is falling short. If they're happy with it, why should they change?

  5. Discontinued... for desktop, probably not critical by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    Just keep in mind that "killed off" doesn't mean "I can't use it any longer" in the case of a desktop tool. I've been using these for years and will continue using them for years without any concern at all about what Google, or Nik before them, might do or not do with future versions, marketing, or availability.

    For web products, certainly. But these aren't that, or at least, the versions I have that I bought from Nik aren't that. I suppose they could have mutated?

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  6. Not really exactly by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    Nik isn't a photo editing suite, it is a suite of Photoshop filters (pro quality) that let you add effects to photos.

    Without Photoshop, they're useless.

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    -Styopa
  7. Re:I don't see the problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's still closed-source. It's now free-to-use though.

  8. Re:I don't see the problem... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    He didn't express a "problem" with it, he offered an analysis of the meaning that uses clearer words instead of PR-speak.

    Understanding should be among the first steps, and well before the formation of opinion.