While we do a lot of photo editing through our mobile devices nowadays, and there are a lot of apps that will help you do that, what we can do is still limited and most artists would still prefer to use desktop applications. One issue though is that these programs can sometimes be a bit expensive. Google is kind of solving that problem by making their Nik Collection photo editing plug-ins free for everyone (and hopefully forever).
The collection consists of seven photo tools that you can use with photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and was previously being sold to consumers for $149. Google actually bought the German developer Nik and all their products for Snapseed, their mobile photo editing app, but they now say that they will continue investing in building their mobile apps. So they decided to make the desktop suite available for everyone.
The following are the seven plug-ins that you can get either individually or as part of the entire suite: Analog Efex Pro which gives your photo a classic, vintage look; Silver Efex Pro for black and white photography; HDR Efex Pro for HDR photography; Color Efex Pro for color correction, retouching and other creative effects; Dfine to help you with noise reduction; Viveza for adjusting the tone of images; and Sharpener Pro for image sharpening tools.
If you were one of those who bought the Nik Collection this year, then you will receive a full refund. Google has promised to give the money back in the next few days, but as to how (cash? cheque? credits in Google Play Store?) that is still unknown. But if you haven’t gotten it yet, you can now download The Nik Collection in its entirety.
SOURCE: Google
