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