Photography toolkit Nik now completely free

25 Mar 2016

Google’s advanced photography toolkit Nik has just been released for free, meaning a suite of seven desktop plugins are just a click away.

Google has decided that Nik – which it bought back in 2012 before more than halving the price soon after – is now free, with anyone who spent the near €200 on it this year to receive a full refund.

Since yesterday (24 March), Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine have all been freely available to download, with Google probably focusing more on the data it generates from a larger user base, than the finance it received for what was a niche clientele.

All the above tools, by the way, work in Photoshop.

“As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo-editing tools for mobile,” explained Google, “we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it.”

Photographer image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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