Nik Collection by Google - FREE for everyone!

Nik Collection team posted the following announcement today:

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 long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we have 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 plug-ins 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.

If you know, and already used this set of plugins, you know what is all about. If you never used it before, now you can try it for free with no limitations. These plug-ins can be used for Adobe Photoshop, Elements, and Lightroom, as well as Apple Aperture.

Google acquired Nik Software and its popular Snapseed photo-editing app back in September 2012. Although Google killed off Snapseed for Desktop in March 2013, it was still big news when Google started selling the entire Nik suite (originally valued at around $500) for the “low price” of $150 later that month. And now it is free for all.

System requirements:

Mac:

* Mac® OS X 10.7.5 through 10.10

* Adobe Photoshop CS4 (CS5 for HDR Efex Pro 2) 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

* Apple® Aperture® 3.1 or later

Windows:

* 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

GPU Compatibility:

NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series, GeForce 9 Series, GeForce 100 Series, GeForce 200 Series, GeForce 300 Series, GeForce 400 Series, GeForce 500 Series, ATI Radeon HD2000 Series, Radeon HD3000 Series, Radeon HD4000 Series, Radeon HD5000 Series, Radeon HD6000 Series.

If no compatible card is available, GPU acceleration will be disabled and the CPU will be used.

Some photo enthusiasts express their worries that making the package free might be a sign that Google might considering eventually dropping support and updates for this suite. Addressing their concern, Google noted that their long-term investment is on building photo-editing tools like Snapseed and Google Photos for mobile. However, it is unclear yet if the Nik Collection will continue to be updated with major features in the future. On the topic of mobile, Snapseed’s most recent update added new automatic features and last year added support for editing RAW photos.

You can download the package from the direct link: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

Screenshots:

Sources and Additional Information:

https://plus.google.com/+NikCollection/posts/AFGsG2Di7EK

http://petapixel.com/2016/03/24/googles-150-nik-collection-photo-editing-software-now-100-free/

http://www.dpreview.com/news/8401470303/google-offers-nik-collection-photo-editing-applications-for-free

FastCopy – Copy Manager with the Fastest Data Transfer Rate

In many cases, you may need to copy big chunks of the information from one location to another: making manual backup, copying HD movie to the USB, etc. In such cases, the speed and the quality of the data transfer would be decisive factor, while selecting the program of choice. FastCopy is considered by numerous users as being the best and the fastest file copy manager on the market.

FastCopy gives consistent results for the data transfer rate, beating competitors in all head-to-head performance comparisons. The problem is also characterized by safe and efficient use of the computer resources during the copying process, keeping the RAM usage consistently low throughout the entire transfer.

The utility can be used free of charge for all purposes, including commercial.

You can use installer to install on the HDD, or you can use it in portable mode:

* For using installed version, run setup.exe, and install it in a new directory.

* If you want to install in USB memory, copy the two files "FastCopy.exe" and "FastCopy.chm" to USB memory.

Website: http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en

MediaCope – Advanced Freeware Media Player and Editor

Media Cope is a multi-functional media software for Windows, equipped with reasonable number of the features to attract attention of both computer geeks and total newbies. On top of the standard medial player capabilities, it includes editor features, which are usually proposed by paid alternatives, or may be found as separate utilities. Having them handy under one roof is what people love in this utility.

Main Features:

* Audio/Video Player. Plays almost any format of audio or video file. You will not need any other media player to process your media library.

* Audio/Video Cutter. It can cut almost any audio/video file and then save directly to the format of your choice, like you can save audio/video directly to your iPhone or other mobile device format.

* Audio/Video Joiner. It can join almost any audio/video file and then save directly to the format of your choice, like you can save joined audio/video directly to your iPhone or other mobile device format.

* Audio Converter. It can convert almost any audio/video to any audio format.

* Video Converter. It can convert almost any video to any video format. You can also crop/pad videos using this.

* Photo Cutter. This can convert several hundreds of your photographs in few minutes. It can save a lot of time when you need to crop many pictures.

* Photo Resizer. It can resize and convert your photographs with special methods.

* Slide Show. A masterpiece that can give your photographs a movie like feel in real-time. All you need to do is select pictures and ask it to run slide show.

* Internet Tools. It contains Speak Text and Web Image Full Screen Viewer, both are amazing tools. Speak Text can read any text on any website by just a click and other tool can view any image on a web page in full screen.

Website: http://www.mediacope.com/index.html

Download page: http://www.mediacope.com/media-cope-download.html

An Easy Way to Keep your Computer Up-to-Date

FileHippo App Manager is a great application that will keep your system up-to-date. FileHippo App Manager will scan your computer for installed applications, check the versions, and then send this data to FileHippo.com to ascertain, if there are any newer releases available. If there are any new releases, they will then get neatly displayed in your browser window for you to download.

FileHippo App Manager is FREE, lightweight and only takes a few seconds to run! The user interface is simple to operate and can be customized as per your preferences. For example, you can change color scheme. The FileHippo AppManager supports downloading and installing of updates inside the app.

Multiple languages are supported, and custom scan locations can be specified. This can be invaluable if you like to install software somewhere other than default locations, such as on a separate drive. The new version of the FileHippo AppManager also introduces scheduled scans, allowing you to check for updates to your installed applications at a set time each day.

Screenshots:

Website: http://filehippo.com/download_app_manager/