Google makes $150 worth of Nik Collection photo editing software completely free

The price of the Nik Collection was dropped from $150 to nothing overnight

Doug Bolton
Friday 25 March 2016 13:13 GMT
Comments
The powerful editing plugins have had their prices cut a few times over the years
The powerful editing plugins have had their prices cut a few times over the years

Good news for photographers - Google is giving away $150 (£105) worth of photo-editing software for free.

The entire Nik Collection of picture editing plugins is now available to download for free from the company's website.

Nik Software, the company behind the popular Snapseed editing app, was bought by Google in 2012.

Shortly after the sale, the price of their plugins was dropped from $500 to $150, and now they're completely free. Better yet, anyone who has bought them this year will be able to get a full refund.

There's a total of seven plugins on offer, which can be used within Photoshop or as standalone software.

The filters include HDR Efex Pro, which offers a range of HDR filter options, Color Efex Pro, which has a wide range of subtle colour filters, and Viveza, an advanced enhancement tool.

Announcing the giveaway on Google+, the company said: "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’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it."

This seems to suggest that Google isn't planning on developing the software any further, as Gizmodo notes, but hopefully that won't matter too much when you're getting them for free.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in