Here’s some worrying news: Google just abandoned Nik’s software suite — the same Nik suite that it bought five years ago, and the same Nik suite that it started offering for free in March of 2016. What does this mean for the world of photography software? One discontinued product might not seem like a big deal, and you may not even be a Nik user, but this development should worry any digital photographer.
1) What Exactly Happened?
With a new banner at the top of the Nik website, Google just announced that they’ve stopped development on the Nik software suite. Specifically, “We have no plans to update the Collection or add new features over time.”
If you use the Nik suite for your photography, that’s a bad sign. What does this mean for the future?
It starts slow. For a while, nothing will change, and Nik will work perfectly fine. In fact, it’s been more than a year since Google’s last update of the Nik package, and, clearly, it hasn’t fallen apart on a wide scale yet.
Then, one day, you’ll update Lightroom, Photoshop, or your operating system to the newest version (which may happen automatically), and Nik abruptly will stop working. There won’t be anything you can do.
The same goes for everyone. Even if you bought the Nik suite at full price (back when it cost a full $500) you’ll lose compatibility just like the rest of us.
When Google bought Nik in 2012, a lot of photographers were optimistic that they were going to use it as a springboard for a photo editing software that could challenge Adobe and add some much-needed competition to the professional photo software industry. When Google offered Nik for free in 2016, it started looking like the opposite would happen. Google didn’t want to develop Nik; they wanted to scrape up the useful code, then discard it.
With this announcement, they discarded it.
Sure, Google owns Nik, and they’re free to do what they want with it. But this decision disrupts the workflow of countless photographers, and it’s easy to see why a lot of people are getting angry. If you offer high-end software for free, don’t be surprised when tons of people download it — and don’t be surprised when so many of them make it an irreplaceable part of their workflow.
That’s not a good recipe for Google, and it’s not a good recipe for us.
2) What are the implications?
Nik software is a great product; it offers features — control points, unorthodox sliders, etc. — that other software does not, and it makes it easier to edit your photos in ways that aren’t easy, or possible, anywhere else. The fact that it’s no longer supported by Google is an ominous sign for the rest of the photo editing world.
2.1) Small Companies Aren’t Safe
In 2012, Nik’s original owners made a smart business decision. Google came knocking at their door, and Nik walked away with a lot of reward for their hard work. Very, very few people will say no when Google asks to buy your company. I would have done the same.
But this is a stark reminder that any low- to mid-popularity photo software you rely upon could face the same pressure, and you never know when another one will be bought and dismantled, too. The world of photography is filled with targets for much larger industries — especially social media giants and smartphone companies — to chase. Nik will not be the last one to follow this path.
I wouldn’t worry, for now, about losing larger products like Capture One (owned by Phase One), Adobe Lightroom, or Adobe Photoshop. They’re much bigger fish than the Nik suite, and they’re more insulated against low-level acquisitions like this (and, compared Google, Nik was almost invisibly low-level). But the lesson here is simple: Keep your options open. No part of your workflow should be irreplaceable, because it’s impossible to know how long any of it will last in such a quickly-changing industry.
2.2) The Adobe Monopoly Tightens
Nikon Capture NX 2; Apple Aperture; Google Nik. Which professional photography software will fall next?
Adobe is looking like the last company left. Its closest challengers — GIMP and Capture One — are miles behind in market share. Whether or not you like Adobe’s software, that’s not a good sign for anyone.
Take Creative Cloud, for example. Adobe’s subscription model no longer relies solely on carrots (new features) to earn your money in the future. Instead, it offers the stick. If you don’t keep paying, you lose access to crucial, irreplaceable parts of your work, such the ability to access any of your Lightroom edits, until you subscribe again. Very few people want to enter a deal like that, but we were enticed in by good prices (for now) and a lack of other options.
Adobe knew they could make a bold move like that because they didn’t feel threatened — and they shouldn’t. Nik may not have been a massive company, but it represents yet another bubble of customers that Adobe will reel back in — and there will be more. What if Zerene Stacker and Helicon Focus fade away in the next ten years, and the only focus stacking software left is Photoshop? What if Hugin and PTGui are acquired by Google, and Adobe is the only place that lets you stitch a panorama? I certainly don’t see either of these scenarios as likely, but no one thought Nik or Aperture would go out, either. Things like this are unpredictable.
3) What You Need to Do
Google signaled today that Nik will be incompatible with some operating system in the future, but it hasn’t stopped working yet. Depending upon how desperate you are, you can still cobble together a long-term solution that keeps Nik up and running indefinitely.
First, if you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and download Nik for free while it still exists. I don’t expect Google to remove their download link any time soon, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
If you do own Nik, ask yourself this: Is it a crucial, unavoidable part of your workflow? And, if so, are you willing to dedicate a second computer (even an extra one you already have) entirely to using this software?
I expect that most people answered no to one or both of those questions. Personally, I use Nik for a lot of my photos, but it doesn’t happen to be the centerpiece of my post-processing workflow. When it no longer works, I won’t feel like I’ve hit a wall. But other photographers will.
The good news is that Nik could last for a long, long time before it loses compatibility. The bad news is that it’s impossible to know exactly how many more weeks, months, or years it will continue to work, but, some day, it will stop.
When that happens, you may want to have a plan in place. Here’s what that could look like:
- First, download the Nik suite to a second computer.
- Don’t update the operating system on that computer automatically. You’ll need to ensure that doing so doesn’t cause compatibility issues. (I recommend disconnecting that computer from the internet.)
- When Nik stops working, it’ll still be alive on the secondary computer. Ideally, you won’t need it for a long time, but the day will arrive when this two-computer setup is a lifesaver.
- Export TIFFs from your main computer to an external drive to edit them in Nik. When you’re done, save and transfer them back to your main computer as if nothing happened.
Yes, it’s cumbersome. It will take time to go through this process for every photo you edit with Nik, and it also can cost some money if you don’t already have a second computer that can work for this purpose. But if you need it, you need it.
Hopefully, of course, you won’t run into compatibility issues for a long time. If Nik is a crucial part of your work, though, you’ll want to do this sooner rather than later. I do predict that the Nik suite will continue working fine for a while, even as you update your operating system and other software, but no one really has any clue if that’s true.
Here’s what you don’t need to worry about: incompatibility if you buy a new camera. Other discontinued software, like Capture NX 2, isn’t able to read today’s RAW files, making it tricky (though not impossible) to use with recent cameras. Nik doesn’t have that problem, since it only ever worked with TIFFs and JPEGs anyway, and the compatibility of those files doesn’t depend upon the camera that they’re from.
Instead, the life expectancy of Nik depends upon the operating system updates that appear in the future. One day, an update will render Nik useless, and we should hope that happens as late as possible.
(Side note: It’s also possible that Nik will lose compatibility with Lightroom or Photoshop before it loses compatibility with your operating system. Although that would be annoying, it wouldn’t be the end of the world; you could always export your photo as a TIFF file, edit it in the standalone version of Nik software on your computer, and then reopen it in Photoshop or Lightroom if necessary. It’s inconvenient, but it’s not as bad as an incompatible operating system.)
4) Conclusion
There aren’t any great options left here. While I’m sure that Google abandoned Nik for economically justifiable reasons, that decision will eventually leave thousands of photographers grasping for a solution — if not tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
As someone who uses Nik for many of my landscape photos, I’m obviously worried by this development. At the same time, it’s also an important wakeup call. When you’re putting together a workflow, no part of it should be irreplaceable. This industry is changing very quickly, and you can’t know which software will survive another year, or even another month.
In the end, we all have to adopt a much more flexible mindset. The start point of a photo (your mind) and the end point (your display) are likely to remain similar for now, but everything in the middle is constantly in flux. Going forward, it’s crucial that photographers adapt to these changes quickly. If not, like Nik software, we eventually will find ourselves left in the dust.
I have a gut feeling that google bought Nik for one of the two reasons. 1) Use their technology in Google Photos 2) Register some Intellectual rights patents for the technology. In both cases, it doesn’t make sense to keep the product alive for “Corporate” Google. So they just got the juice out and killed it. I may be wrong but thats what i think.
Yes, both options seem very possible. I’m sure that Google’s rationale could be found with some digging, but I do think that this sort of ending was inevitable. From a corporate standpoint, it definitely makes sense. But, for now, a lot of photographers are worried and frustrated at what’s happening.
Agreed. I am one of those people who bought it at $150 price and I am such a regular user of Silver Effex pro and Color Effex pro. Sad to see this great product ending like this.
You are exactly correct.
GOOGLE is a bag so shit in my books. Good for them. See if I purchase a single item from this company of assholes.
Since they bought it, they can do what they like, good luck getting a penny from me on anything that has GOOGLE written on it.
Just saw this, and I’ll look more into it later….but, I have the full suite of Nik. I love the black and white conversion, and I also like the HDR software. This is a shame, but I suspected Google would eventually drop Nik. I’ll have to figure out a way to keep Nik, if possible, when Lightroom and Windows operating systems are upgraded.
I guess it’s time for me to do a big push to convert a number of images to B&W quickly, using Nik….it really is my favorite program to doing so.
It is a shame. I use Color Efex more than the others, but there’s not a dud in the suite.
On the bright side, it is possible to cobble together a working system to use Nik in the future (the double computer solution above). On the downside, it’s far from convenient.
Hi Spencer,
I have one older PC still running Windows 7 Pro, which I didn’t update because hardware component wise (MOBO, RAM, CPU), it would have been very slow running Windows 10. I’m not sure how well it would do any photo editing at all really, but I will download NIK onto it so I have it on there anyway. I have been trying out some other software anyway, namely ON1 and Affinity, and they seem pretty decent so far. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about Google or anyone else for that matter buying up any other products yet. I still like Lightroom 6.1 and use it all the time.
Vinnie
On1 and Affinity are excellent packages.
On1 especially seems to be adding features almost every month. They have a general suite (On1 Photo) and one dedicated to RAW conversion and editing that is getting very comprehensive (On1 PhotoRaw).
They just sent out an email re: the Nik situation to assure customers they intend to be around a VERY long time.
Hope so.
There are million news about google ai picture drawing, editing etc. They are deeply in that business. Most likely they used that code, and now a new generation is ready.
Good article, and excellent points. However, there is a burgeoning movement among plug-in developers to go full featured. Off the top of my head, On1, Topaz Studio, Affinity, etc. are working themselves towards being viable replacements for Photoshop. Do you folks at PhotographyLife have any experience with these and other similar products?
On1, Topaz, Alien Skin all offer very good options and in many ways easier to use. The image software market is fractured and is a victim of demands of its many users who vary in skill and objectives.
About 10 years ago I moved to Linux, I use Darktable , a very useful , very comprehensive Raw editing software. I have never looked back after that.
I never understood the software companies like Adobe , in the past charging for CS6 around $700 for stuff that requires no raw materials, manufacturing etc . An excellent Nikon DSLR body costs about $1000. Go figure.
Software can takes teams of people thousands of hours to develop and they don’t generally do that work for free.
To Jeffrey Wright : I agree with you that the employees need to be paid.
But sometimes the devil is in details, Adobe CEO 2016 compensation $ 20.000.000. Nikon CEO slightly less than $1.000.000. We need to bring a sense of measure.
Both are ridiculously high amounts for a salary but I’d say it at least makes sense that Adobe’s CEO makes a lot more than Nikons. Adobe’s user base is vastly larger than Nikons, it spans way more industries, and is depended on much more by those same industries. Nikon could die tomorrow and while it would suck for its user base and fans (of which I’m one) it wouldn’t be a seachange event. There is still Canon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Fuji… to switch to. If Adobe disappeared however nearly every creative and business industry would be severely damaged. Think of how ubiquitous Adobe Acrobat has become or Postscript? Photography, graphic design, illustration, printing, animation, music, film, attorneys, any large corporation, and more all depend on Adobe software. While individual programs have some competition there is no other company with an existing product line that competes with Adobe. They’ve already killed them all off.
To Jeffrey Wright : “They’ve already killed them all off” . I agree with you, gradually we are becoming prisoners of monopolies. That is the reason I moved to Open Source.
Hi Daniel, will you be kind enough to share which and how your opensource OS and softwares have been working for you? I would like to break the windows but don’t have the luxury of having apples.
I have been using Capture One (sadly no linux version) for RAW processing, GIMP for photo editing, and Inkscape for vector graphics. It is only matter of time until my 4-year-old notebook falls apart and I must buy a new one, and I really don’t want all spooky stuffs of the tenth windows.
To Rany Tan: I got your message . Give me a few days, I am short in time now. Will give you details.
Thank you Daniel.
First let me give you a little bit of history, I do not have any background in computing or technology. About 10 years ago I noticed the difficulties that people with Windows computers were having and found in an article that most of the Google servers used Linux as operating software. At that time I saw Linux operating systems that could work in laptops or desktops and I started working on it. I learned installation from YouTube and the forums.
Presently most of the computers in our house are running on Linux. For work I have a couple of programs that run on Windows as the only choice so I run them inside virtual box. All photography needs are done within Linux , no Windows needed.
Hardware: I use a laptop with 1920×1080 resolution. The CPU is I5 with four gigs of RAM. When using Darktable, it uses 22% of the of the RAM.
The operating software is Linux Mint 18, 64-bit. Cinnamon edition. I do not use antivirus or anti-spyware, those are Windows EXE files and do not work in Linux.
Go to Linux Mint website and download the iso image, then burn it to a DVD. Backup all your files of the computer in which you going to install Linux Mint . Proceed with installation. Youtube and forums are full with instructions on how to do that.
In regards to photography everything that I do is with Darktable (90%) and GIMP (10%). I do not know if Photographylife has the capability of uploading pictures from the forum users. You can find out , I can upload pictures, so you can see. “The proof is in the pudding “.
I hope this helps
Agree, however…there is little relation to cost of developing software and license cost. License cost I purely based on how much software users are willing to pay for it. And the the more this market becomes an Adobe monopoly, the more Adobe will be able to squeeze out of our wallets.
If there would be a relation between development cost and license cost, why would we be paying nearly 145 euros annually (!) for Photoshop, while you can get almost the same functionality from e.g. Affinity for roughly a third of that amount one off? It’s all about market shares.
Nothing new, though…in the analog days there was no relation to production and development cost of Kodak films. It’s no secret that Kodak made a 70 percent margin on each film, and was once one of the most valuable companies. Until they ignored a disruptive new technology: digital cameras and smartphones. They thought they were safe, they thought they owned the market. The rest is history.
While true, this is also true of nearly every single product sold. Many items have markups over cost in the thousands of percent. Clothing, especially designer, clothing, furniture, dishes, pharmaceuticals… Nothing is priced solely based on raw material cost.
There really isn’t any competitor to Photoshop that can do what it can do. When people say that you can get almost the same functionality in something else they really mean that they can for their needs but that’s usually a photographer that’s probably not utilizing half of Photoshop’s capability. Photoshop is also used by graphic designers, digital painters, comic artists, filmmakers, 3d artists, and the list goes on.
Many of the tools utilized in these industries either don’t exist in other software, are not implemented as well, or don’t have the advantage of smooth integration with other needed software tools. The tools in Photoshop for photographers are some of its oldest and most basic so of course there are many other software options to replace those.
Photoshop has really always been marketed and sold by Adobe as a professional tool and as one it has always seemed very fairly priced to me, for photographers especially. People will spend thousands of dollars to buy a new camera or lens every year or two or three yet would likely improve their photography a great deal more by getting better at learning how to “develop” their image in software.
Although I understand people’s dislike of being forced into a subscription model I understand it from Adobe’s part. It gives them a steady stream of revenue and makes it harder to steal its software; and prior to the subscription model theft of its software, especially Photoshop, was rampant.
It is very sad. At such moments, you understand why Google is evil.
And why we are addicts…
This is an example of the perverse monopoly that google have. Long may the EU continue to try and hold google to account through the legal system. I am about go of in a tangent, but why oh why doesn’t the US government insist on net neutrality,
To Mark Jarret : the US government doesn’t insist in net neutrality for the reason that US is no longer a republic. It has developed into a Corporate Oligarchy. Works this way: Corporations give money to politicians , they in turn pass laws that help Corporations. That simple.
So sad but so true.
One other action is to use Fuji and their excellent jpeg’s and for 99% that should work – and free up the too little time we have in our lives for post processing… ;-)
As I’m used to analog photography I try to fix exposure etc at the time of the taking I’m just happy with Fuji’s jpeg.
But it is correct – Adobe increases their monoply and this is not good.
-J!
” I try to fix exposure etc at the time of the taking”
Maybe the events discussed in the article will lead more people to doing this.
Analog work is no different. When crafting a photograph the capture of the image in the camera is just the beginning and always has been. Shooting jpegs is like shooting film but just dropping your film off to a one hour photo mart where a machine is making all the density and color adjustments for you automatically. It’s fast and easy and will give you good but not the best quality image. If you want the best quality print from a negative you have always needed to work your negative properly in the darkroom or work with a print professional who could develop the print into the image you envisioned. That’s more work and time but gives a potentially superior result. Either will work, it just depends on what is more important to you. If they were shooting today I’m guessing Henri Cartier Bresson would be a jpg shooter whereas Ansel Adams would be working with raw files. Both photographers were great but were known for very different subjects and had very different approaches. Bresson was more concerned with capturing a perfect moment whereas Adams used how negative as a starting point to create a dramatic image otherwise unobtainable in camera.
Agree, in the old days one did a lot of B/W work in exposure of the paper, shadowing with fingers etc. Indeed post processing SW is the modern follower to this.
The main advantage as I see it is that now we can see the result before shooting, but with the limitation of the cameras DR etc..
On the other hand I am lucky not to have to learn another set of SW, not to face issues with Win upgrades and what have you not – the jpegs I get are good enough to save me this koind of issues and the time neede to PP..
There are probably cleaner ways to do this using virtual machines – thay can access the drives on the host PC and coluld use an older operating system, anybody have a bit more knowledge aboutnhow to set this up?
Hi,
I wrote my comment before reading yours. I think I may have answered your question below.
Apparently you both haven’t worked with simulated OSs. It’s not so straight forward. The setup itself is relatively easy, but as soon as you want to use peripheral drives, scanners, printers, graphic tablets, even certain keyboards, troubles are about to start. Sure, they are not too steep to overcome, but you need to care about two OSs. If one gets no more updates (Windows XP and all Mac OSs older than three versions earlier the current system) you need to make sure it doesn’t get malware.
Running more OSs on one physical machine is doable, but not reducing the problems with OSs in general.
I’m not too sure about Macs, but I do know that you can run an older program that isn’t compatible with your operating system using “Window’s comparability mode” relatively successfully. So you could run Nik “as Windows 7” on Windows 10.
Also, if you didn’t want to run a second computer, all you have to do it copy your current version of Windows (again, not sure about Mac) over to an SSD (Less that £100 now) and have the option to run either operating system when the computer boots up. It’s very simple. If you have a second hard drive or a NAS drive for your photo storage, you could even access that with both operating systems.
This means you will have all of your photos on one hard drive and you can access them with either the current version of Windows (without Nik) or an older version of Windows (with Nik).
D
I take advantage of the fact that Spencer addresses the subject of Adobe’s monopoly in his excellent article to give you my testimony: As a wedding photographer, like many of you probably, I pay every month for the Creative Cloud suite. I saw this type of racket rather badly, but I thought that at least it guaranteed me a quality support. A few months ago I bought a graphic card in order to operate its support by Lightroom and thus benefit from an acceleration in my work. Lightroom was working fine when I was using the processor-based GPU (core i7 Skylake). With the new video card, everything went well until the Lightroom update in April: Unable to use the development module without it crashes. After checking that the card was in the list of those recommended by Adobe (Radeon R9 380) and nothing was improved by reinstalling the drivers and after doing all the usual checks, I contacted the Adobe support by chat (impossible to contact them by e-mail, at least in my country, France). After three contacts, where each time I had to explain again my configuration and my problem because despite the existence of a case number, they do not note anything or else they do not want to fatigue themselves to read their notes. After these three contacts, hours spent reinstalling drivers, the software itself, to try Adobe utilities without any result, here is what they told me to do: Disable in Lightroom the option ” Support for graphics processor “and contact the manufacturer of the video card. Bye, kisses and thanks ! What would I have become without such valuable advice? They claim that the problem is nothing in Lightroom and comes from the GPU, yet approved by them. And I’m not talking about all the inconsistent checks they’ve forced me to make, all the stupid assertions they’ve made, and all they’ve been able to say to get clear of any responsibility. But if it interests someone, I kept the transcript of the chat.
So to complete Spencer’s comments, in addition to the carrot and the stick, there’s also a finger stretched high when you’re bored with their products. We say thank you to whom?
I don’t understand the fuss. The real bummer was when Google made the software free, thus making it harder for inspired programmers to break into the market.
There are plenty of new software offerings out there – Aurora, Affinity, e. g. – and there will be others. Life moves on; in my view better without the likes of Google or Adobe (whose photo software I have abandoned completely).
Google bought Snapseed too – Snapseed is free – Snapseed is an AMAZING software (esp. for editing on phone/tablet). I’m having this horrible feeling Google might do the same with it as well. Oh God! I hate them so much right now. :(
As I understand it, Google bought Nik specifically for the Snapseed code, after which Google offered the “detritus” for free.
This is correct, Snapsneed was the real target.
One other thing to note overall, the Nik suite has not had any updates in the last several years, no new development at all, even before it “went free”. Others, such as On1 and Topaz, have moved forward. As always happen in software, over time algorithms and methods improve, this has certainly been the case with On1 and Topaz in particular. Nothing wrong with sticking with the older technology, but every once in a while it might behoove us all to take a look at the “new” to see what improvements might be had.
“But the lesson here is simple: Keep your options open. No part of your workflow should be irreplaceable, because it’s impossible to know how long any of it will last in such a quickly-changing industry.”
True, but I think another important lesson is… learn to use ACR/LR and PS. I mean really learn to use it. I doubt LR or PS is going away anytime soon. They’re brand equity is far too valuable for someone to acquire then merely stop supporting as Google did with NIK. Two years ago I decided to wean myself off of Nik and learn to use ACR and PS to accomplish the same results. After all, why buy a $6000 road bike then slap a pair of training wheels on it? Why spend $150,000 to remodel your kitchen with professional appliances and cookware, only prepare frozen pre-made meals? I’ve met so many photographers who lean on plug-ins so heavily they’re literally lost in PS without them. They’re essentially paying for PS just to host their plug-ins. Such madness. So why not just learn to use PS? Ok I admit, in the beginning I also relied on Nik, Topaz, etc. because I could get results quick. When I started to use ACR and PS exclusively, the learning was tough, but once I got a grip on the fundamentals it became progressively easier to learn. Best thing I ever did for my photography. I’m still learning, but now I’m creating the best images I’ve ever created and having more fun in process. While I believe there are certain plug-ins out there that are difficult to live without, I don’t think Nik’s suite of plug-in is one of those. Good bye NIK, it was fun while it lasted.
Interesting perspective. I found the exact opposite. The NIK plugins are the only ones I’ve used that I couldn’t duplicate their effects directly in Photoshop without a great amount of more time. ACR isn’t comparable as it deals mostly with global changes with only basic ability to be selective in localized adjustments . With PS you can achieve anything but only with much more time and effort to achieve what you can do with NIK in seconds.
I agree with you to an extent. First to clarify, when I mention ACR, I mean used in conjunction with PS as ACR can be invoked as a non-destructive filter within PS which allows you to leverage PS’s advanced masking capabilities that gives you precision selective adjustments far greater than NIK can ever hope to achieve. Now I fully agree that at first learning to replicate NIK plugins in ACR and PS can take a bit of time, especially for the novice PS user. This is exactly why all these plug-ins sell. Novices struggle with PS because it’s difficult to learn; it takes time, so they loose patience, they give up and then glom onto short-cut plug-ins (and even worse “filters” which are even easier to recreate but that’s another topic), which really undermines the development of their post processing skills. Quite frankly, NIK’s target audience are PS users who are unwilling/unable to learn to use PS.
Take the time to learn to use PS properly, yes it’s an investment in time, but since you’re paying a lot of money for all that professional processing capability why not learn to use it? Once you grasp it you’ll find you can recreate the effects found in NIK relatively fast. AND once you’ve recreated a desired effect the first time, all you need to do is save it as your own preset, action, or filter that you can invoke in SECONDS anytime you want to use it again. There’s so many YouTube videos out there teaching people how to use PS and even how to recreate presets, actions and filters that it’s almost ridiculous not to try.
Caveat: I’m not criticizing all plug-ins as there are some that are still magic to me, such as Heliconsoft, Serene Stacker, PhotoZoom.
I actually disagree with almost everything you said there. There is a big difference between Photoshop compatible plugins generically and using filters or recipes. There is overlap but they aren’t synonymous. I’ve used Photoshop since around 1992, when it wasn’t the market leader and not even that great as photo manipulation software. Many features that are in PS today started as either 3rd party or in house plugins. Plugins have often been able to accomplish things you just couldn’t do with PS by itself or could only do with inferior results or more time. If you are adjusting images professionally time is especially important.
PS isn’t really that hard to use but it was never meant for novices or for people who didn’t need detailed manipulation of an image. Although there is a learning curve I’ve never found it any more difficult than learning its competition. I find gimp way more difficult. That’s why Lightroom was created. Photoshop has added so many tools, many of which don’t benefit photographers manipulating stills that they needed something to appeal to photographers who needed a simpler method of making global adjustments but didn’t destroy market share of their own product. They could have done the same thing by just beefing up PS Elements a bit but that would have canablized PS sales and Elements is already more than sufficient for most people.
NIK’s target audience was never people who didnt know how to use photoshop, at least it wasnt pre google. I was a beta tester for several of their products and knew some of their employees here in San Diego. They were a very photographer centric group and would host events and tutorials at their HQ in San Diego on using their plugins and Photoshop in general. Being able to build and run actions in PS is great but it still doesn’t have the combination of control and speed of what many good plugins can do, especially the NIK plugins. I hope Macphun continues to do well as they have a great product and were started by ex NIK folk. They have a lot of skill and ingenuity.
“They were a very photographer centric group and would host events and tutorials at their HQ in San Diego on using their plugins and Photoshop in general.” Why thank you for the complement and no we’ve ever met ;0)
“PS is great but it still doesn’t have the combination of control and speed of what many good plugins can do, especially the NIK plugins.” I know PS evolved with the big help of plug-ins that are so useful today. Like I already mentioned, my comments only apply to NIK only, as there are plug-ins out there (some I already mentioned) that I think work magic. But I know that NIK plug-ins can be recreated with a modicum of skills if you take the time to learn. “Control and speed” you say? No way at the hands of someone skilled in PS. U-Point is generally decent, but once you understand its underlying algorithms, you’ll see that it’s a sledge hammer compared to one who’s skilled with manipulating the Paint Brush tool + luminosity masking using RGB channels (as well as frequency masking, vibrancy masking, saturation masking, to name a few) and understands Blend Modes, Layer Styles (particularly Blend-If), Apply Image and when to use the Opacity and Fill sliders…etc, etc. This all sound like a lot, and it is. But learn it and you’ll have far greater control than NIK. My main point is that not all is lost with the demise of NIK and to encourage users that you can learn. At the Adobe Learning Workshops here in SF (no I don’t work for Adobe but my office is within walking distance of the HQ) I frequently see users demo wonderful skill, many of these users are still in elementary school.
I get it, you like working in PS, I like saving time. I know how to do everything you mentioned in PS but things improve over time and methods that you once had to use get replaced by other things. That’s fine if the replacement is better but losing NIK or whatever great tool might be out there is a step backward. I’m glad I dont have to depend on using the channel mixer in PS anymore for example. I’ve used PS professionally for around 20 years and NIK is the only set of plugins I’ve consistently included in my workflow.
I’ve survived without NIK being supported for the last years of it’s life though and will survive if it goes away completely. It’s interesting that it used to be Adobe who was the one that was known for killing off better software than what was was already out there. There were a lot of angry designers when they killed off Freehand which was far superior to Illustrator at the time and in some areas superior to what illustrator can do even today.
“It’s interesting that it used to be Adobe who was the one that was known for killing off better software than what was was already out there.” I hear you brother. It’s the software business. Hah, I used to work for a large software company and there was a period when we acquired five companies a year, until we got acquired, and then they got acquired…it’s laughable. I had the pleasure of managing client engagement in a couple of those acquisitions…not laughable.
I understand how software changes beyond one’s control can be disruptive and frustrating to your workflow, especially to one that depends on the software for their profession. Wish you luck in finding a NIK replacement.
MacPhun’s Luminar will have cataloging ability later this fall they told me. It will not be long before that app challenges Lightroom as a viable alternative. MacPhun, Topaz, and OnOne are remarkable companies that have weaned me away from Adobe.
Dear Spencer,
thank you for the interesting read. I am also mad about this. Back in the day, I payed the full price for the NIK suite. I was a student then and it was not easy for me to scrape together all that money. Also, I paid full price for LR2. But I was convinced by the quality of the products and I wanted and needed a professional workflow.
I remember the first time I felt totally ripped off was, when adobe lowered the prices for LR. Later google took over NIK and made the software available for free. I got into contact with google customer service explaining them that I want my money back (foolish, I know :-). I was so angry.
So I basically feel tricked into paying approximately 800€ (LR2, upgrade toLR3, NIK, …) into Software that is now significantly cheaper or for free. I kinda get what google was doing and do not hold a grudge anymore. But Adobe … I consider their sales/marketing department a criminal organisation. Communication with their customer service feels like talking to the Russian government.
So I decided to use the LR / NIK combination as long as it is supported. Meanwhile I inform myself about alternatives in preparation to switch my main editing software.
Try installing Linux Mint which completely free along with its editing photography software.
Hi Spencer good article! , but i,m not gooing to loose sleep over NIK. (I,m also one of those who paid full price for their plugins)
i just keep my raw files readonly ! and export prints via whatever tool LR , C1 etc. even wigh capture nxd from nikon..
Live is short and i enjoy the prints mostly (bigly haha)
HI Spencer,
Thank you for this eyeopening and very interesting article.
I am one of those that bought the Nik-Filters many years ago when I was working with a Microsoft system.
At the time of purchase Nik was a wonderful system since it integrated completely into Capture NX2 and enabled me to do all adjustment strait on the RAW (NEF).
I thought this combination of CNX2 and Nik-Filters was the greatest software on earth (for me!) because I am not a Pro and don’t have to much of a clew about editing photos (never liked Photoshop because it is to complicated for me and I still don’t like Lightroom, even though I have LR 5.7), but I got result that where just great.
And it was really simple and absolutely intuitive to use.
Then Nikon discontinued CNX2 and my newer cameras didn’t work with it anymore.
Sadly Nik-Filters never worked so seamless with Capture NX-D because the program could not be integrated the same way.
So, that experience is not new to me and I think as well whenever it suits the industry for their benefits/profits they will just do whatever they want and discontinue things.
Yes, I absolutely agree to your words, we should be prepared!
Best regards from Germany,
Juergen
Nikon was licensing NIK’s code for Capture NX-2. They lost that when Google bought NIK which is why they had to come out with NX-D.
Jeffrey, I believe the demise with NX-2 really began when Nikon was very reluctant to go 64-bit and NIK was going that direction, think CEP4 for example, and why it was never integrated with NX2. You and I were in much the same position “way back when” in the early testing days, working through, and with, the NIK/NX2 combination was a lot of fun, and a lot of work. At the time that truly was total non-destructive editing, my hope has been that On1 RAW would provide the same, but it still has a ways to go in that regard. As to plug-ins and such, I am a software dev by trade and I can most certainly create anything I need to by writing code in whatever flavor of machine language is required, much as I can create everything within PS, obviously the 3rd party folks like NIK figured out how. That being said I would much prefer to spend my time utilizing tools that do the job more quickly for me, rather than becoming the “expert” in esoteric ways of using a base product, such as PS or LR.
Hi Bill, yeah you may be right about NX-2. Silly on Nikons part as NX-D is just not as good. Like you I’ve picked up ON1 and have been forcing myself to try using it more but I really don’t care for it. The interface feels clunky and cluttered to me and until the newest version came out was buggy and slow. The new version is much faster and seems stable but I still can’t stand the interface. It just feels like work to have to use it but I’m admittedly much more familiar with PS, OR, and Photomechanic.
meant to say PS, LR, any Photo Mechanic. No way to edit posts I guess.
Hi guys,
I feel the same way, Vale NIK, but there is one thing most of us can do
Dedicate your hot specced-up computer to photographic and other non-online purposes, permanently disconnect it from the internet (CC subscribers stop reading here) , your Windows OS will never be upgraded.
Buy a cheap(er) PC and dedicate it to online use. Facebook, email, internet banking, maybe even use Linux if like Navy SEALs you reckon Pain Is Your Friend.
Some of us live in families with a family of PCs under one roof, so that spare PC may not be far away. In my case, I really would have to buy another.
You can switch the monitors using a KVM switch so you get to utilise your two beautiful monitors either way. This demands the “spare” PC have a decent graphics card/capability and adequate power supply.
Virtual machines aren’t worth the trouble IMO it really has to be separate boxen.
Just my two cents worth
Jim
Canberra
I hope someone like Mozilla will rescue photography from the uncaring giant software companies.
No mention of MacPhun software- only for Macs at this point. I hope they are not next to disappear; I use it often and it has opened up a whole new world of what’s possible with digital images.
MacPhun for PC’s will be out in September 2017. Many Nik people went there. In addition, google made Nik, open sourced. Some one will pick it up. I have no fears
maghi cat, do you have any verifiable evidence that Google made Nik open source? If so, I’m sure a dedicated group of photography loving coders would have taken on the challenge, as did those who took on Oracle’s office suite, turning it into OpenOffice. How sweet that would be!
I don’t think they’ve made anything from NIK open source although I’d love it if they would. Do you have any evidence of this?
With the decline in sales volume of digital cameras it makes sense that some consolidation/elimination of photographic software would happen. After all it does cost money to keep programs updated and without sufficient sales volume software companies simply can’t cover their fixed costs.
Like many photographers I like Nik a lot and use some of its features regularly. Not being a big fan of Adobe I still use CS6 and at this point I have no plans to use Adobe cloud products in the future.
The only software product I regularly update is DxO OpticsPro which I use in concert with CS6, Nik and Topaz. As long as updating OpticsPro allows me to still use CS6 and Nik downstream in my post process it likely won’t matter to me whether CS6 or Nik are ever updated.
Tom
Same here Tom, still using CS6; for me it works but I do not edit tons images, so converting from NEF to DNG is not that bad. I also understand that if you do work and edit a lot of images then CC is a better approach.
Here is a poll to keep this wonderful software alive, maybe google (or maybe another company) will care about it if we have enough signatures?
www.gopetition.com/petit…alive.html
Thanks, signed.
Surprised that there is no reference of Corel Aftershot Pro or Corel paintshoppro in your article
Often underestimated, it is one of the best available in market now (I find it much better than Adobe). Given that it works only for Windows users & that’s the only thing I hold against Corel
I’ve never had luck with Aftershot. It’s always been buggy and crashprone on my computers but for those it works for I’ve heard good things. I haven’t tried PSP in several years but last time I did it wasn’t even close to the functionality of Photoshop. In fact I always wondered why Corel bought Paintshop Pro years back when they already had a superior program in Photopaint. For a while Photopaint was better than Photoshop but Corel just let it languish.
Unfortunately, I knew this day was coming. I’m a huge NIK fan and love their software. It’s just a matter of time before Apple or MS update their operating system and will cause a stoppage. I deal with Macphun as an affiliate, their software is good, ping me if you’re interested in a deal. In the meantime, I’ll keep using NIK until the end.
How to obtain this deal?
Software companies have a long history of buying out smaller companies and then cannibalizing the tech, but honestly, who cares. Companies come and go and there’ll be another one pop up sooner or later. No need to panic.
Google already did the same thing with Picasa photo albums. Google seams to lack long-term vision in this area on a senior level.
That so f me off. It was a great platform to share photographs with family who do not us facbook
In the case of Capture NX-2 its been superseded by Capture NX-D That what you use for D7200 Nikon Camera.
Google’s purchase of NIK caused Nikon the loss of the upoint technology which was licensed from NIK. It made NX-2 superior to NX-D in my opinion. That’s the worst thing about Google having bought NIK. I’ve not found any other software that can create adjustments as quickly, effectively, and intuitively as the ones using upoint and now the only software that has it and continues to be developed is the mobile version of Snapseed. Google also killed off the desktop version of Snapseed early on. Even Macphun software which was started by ex NIK employees doesn’t have it. These types of business decisions by google are what makes their slogan of doing no evil sound like such a joke. Their business decision has already negatively impacted other companies and photographers and will continue to do so. Of course this is nothing new in the world of software. Nearly all of Adobe’s entire software offerings started life at other companies like Macromedia. The big difference though is that at least Adobe for the most part would make these purchases to improve their existing software, Google seems to just do so to be able to sit on a few more patents or to force productivity away from the end user’s control on a computer to content online that Google can datamine for personal info and buying habits.
Jeffrey, when you look deep into the bowels of NX-D you see reference to Silkypix, another older editing program. Seems they are the new “software arm” of Nikon. While I agree with you that Control Points are pretty darned special, the Quick Mask brush in On1 comes in a fairly close second. Having tested side-by-side on the same image I can do pretty much the same job in the same amount of time with both Nik and On1. Disclaimer, I do not work for On1, reluctantly started using On1 when Nik development ended, and now use On1 far more often than Nik.
I rather agree with your sentiments regarding Google and Adobe.
There is still darktable………….
Not quite the same league yet, but making good progress. And it least it has an open architecture.
To Jozef Dassen: Darktable has been in my formula . Windows OS about $150. Adobe CS6 $700 (in the past). Now it would a Adobe drip, drip every month. Add up above makes $850, that pays for a local trip , take more photographs, make me a better photographer that requires less editing (rather being outside than in front of a computer). Has been the solution for me.
I agree with the comment from Geo. Get proficient at using ACR and Photoshop. I saw the banner on Nik’s website some time ago and decided to spend some time evaluating the Nik filters I use the most. If you really know ACR and are comfortable with layers, layer masks, blending and the brush tool in Photoshop you will be surprised how quickly you can duplicate quite a lot of the filters in Nik. Especially many filters in Color Efex Pro.
The one exception, at least for me, is noise removal. I do not like ACR’s noise removal tool. I now use Topaz noise removal.
On one hand you say “get proficient”, yet you continue to use other tools, such as Topaz. It appears that you use Topaz because either it is easier to do the job than in PS/ACR, or you can’t do the job to your satisfaction in PS/ACR. Isn’t that the reason we use 3rd party tools in the first place?
As I have said before, I’d rather spend my time more productively by using other tools, than fiddling around with added layers/masks/etc. That was the absolutely beauty of the Nik/NX-2 partnership, in my opinion no one has even come close.
I got my first computer in 1984. I weathered the demise of many favorite programs like Dbase, Wordstar and my expensive practice management software. Despite missing the I don’t want to go back. I’m able to get Adobe CS at student rates but when that goes away I’m move over to ACDsee an underrated program that now mimicks Lightroom and PS by working with layers. I don’t believe in renting my software because the rug can always be pulled out from under you.
I agree with you also, renting software might be fine, but things can change and you might not be able to budget for the rental software. Last year I did not work for nine months and I gave up the cloud version of LR & PS, however I did own my copy of Capture One 9 so not such a big deal, I rather prefer it anyway. I started working again this FEB and all is fine, I own Capture One 10 now….
I’ve been using ACDSee for content management for at least a decade, probably longer. It’s excellent. The big features (for me) are:
1. Images are stored separately as thumbnails in the database, so they load very fast. To renew or add to these doppelgangers you just open the folder you want and ACDSee does the rest. A DB management routine cleans crud from the db.
2. It supports controlled vocabularies, called “catalogs”, natively. In a controlled vocabulary, “Bronx” is a tree branch connected to “New York City”, which is connected to “New York State” connected to “United States”. You specify “Bronx” and everything above it in the tree gets dragged along. Very powerful.
3. Things like keywords, catalog listings, and camera metadata are stored externally, in the database. Response is instantaneous.
4. You can generate a list of uncategorized or unkeyworded images in one click. This is a very big thing for keeping organized.
5. You can display a standard calendar, click on a date, and get everything listed for that date. This is a very big thing for finding stuff.
6. Searching and filtering are fairly powerful. It lacks a “no” operator though, a major drawback. There are workarounds.
This is tech morality all over again…and again…and again. Acquire groovy technology, own it, and dismiss the users as irrelevant. Too bad. Nik Silver Efex Pro is just stunningly great – it allowed me to convert several hundred color photos for a b&w book in record time, with outstanding results.
Google seldom listens, and then only barely, to customers.
I propose that we all immediately uninstall Snapseed. I will.
Google can easily afford to keep NIK software compatible with future Adobe products. They ditch thinking we do not care, and that we can do nothing in response.
Google cares about their cellphone presence. Why should we care?
Bill
I keep all my older, irreplaceable software in a VMWare virtual machine running Mac OS Snow Leopard Server. I also keep a copy of Photoshop CS6, even though I work in Photoshop CC, as well as a paid version of Lightroom, apart from Lightroom CC. And when I work in Photoshop, I use the TIFF format, not PSD, so I can take the files anywhere. So, I’ll always be able to open my Photoshop and Lighroom files, even if I don’t have all the latest editing features.
This news is the pits, I guess I’m going on a separate Windows 7-64 machine run CS5 along with the NIK catalog I bought. This machine hasn’t been updated since Win10 was announced and it’s windows updates are disabled and everything still works “great”. On my other Win 7-64 machine I’ll just keep running LRCC and Photoshop CC17 . Darn shame these big companies can’t see the forest for the trees.
“Adobe is looking like the last company left. Its closest challengers — GIMP and Capture One — are miles behind in market share. ”
Check out Affinity Photo. After 20 years of Photoshop professional use, I’m switching to Affinity. In fact, Affinity Photo and Designer have both replaced Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for about 98% of my work.
Is not only a matter of cost (Affinity Photo is only $50, not to mention the launch offer which can get as low as $30) but also workflow.
To me, working with Affinity it’s been finally a refreshing way to approach my photo-retouch needs.
Just my 2 c.
Affinity Photo looks the shizz. If it’s a real PS alternative at last, then goodbye subscription and Adobe – which would be fabulous.
I downloaded the trial of Affinity Photo, checked it out for the past couple days. I’m sold. I’m going to give them my money. I’m a Nikon guy, so I’ll use Nikon NX-D – slow but very good results, I can live with that, and I’ll use Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop which is no great loss as far as I can tell. And the bonus is that Affinity supports Nik and I’m using it as such. Adios Adobe.
Thanks Andrew for directing me to Serif software.
I am dismayed by many in this thread who seem to accept that change and obsolescence are inevitable. Nik software is truly unique! If Google allows it to whither away and die, I will neither forget nor forgive them. I don’t know at the moment what I will do, but Google will have taken someone who was a fan and created an enemy.
It’s tough to be a plugin company I’m sure and there are so many out there that do the same thing. Most of them disappearing wouldn’t bother me all that much even though there are some really excellent ones available. However, I completely agree with you about NIK, nothing else available works the way they do. They are so fast and intuitive and powerful. For many of my images I’d give up Photoshop and Lightroom before giving up Viveza. I will sometimes use topaz and I’ve been considering moving from Lightoom over to ON1 which I also own but I would take the NIK software over any of them. I knew people at NIK when it was sold to Google though and knew the end was near as soon as they sold. Google does not have a good history of keeping their purchases going. There is a long list of companies they have bought out to either just add to their patent catalogue, reduce market competition, or force consumers to online services.
If you’re “dismayed”, as you put it, by a particular reality, your expectations are probably unrealistic.
Not really. I’m not sure why Google bothered with this product to begin with. And, then to offer it for free? Not good for future development of most anything.
I’ve used NIK from its inception and it’s an excellent product. Having Google involved was a mistake as you no longer could speak to someone on the phone.
Hopefully the folks that originally developed NIK will be offered the opportunity to get it back although they have obviously forged ahead with other similar products.
This was utterly predictable when Google put NIK out for free.
But there’s a lot you can do. I use five abandonware programs routinely, and two more occasionally. Some of them were abandoned fifteen years ago. No problem.
1. Just carry on. Abandonware can take decades to fail. For instance, the Paradox database had had no updates since 2004 — and it still works on every edition of Windows from Win95 on.
2. Roll back to standalone Adobe products. You know that Nik works with them.
3. If all else fails, install it on a virtual machine running the last version of Windows that works with your software. I do this for the Nikon software that runs my Super Coolscan 5000 slide scanner, and a deLorme product that lets me make GPS ready topo maps of England. These only works on XP, so I’ve installed a (completely free) Oracle’s VirtualBox running XP. The installation was ridiculously easy. www.virtualbox.org/
It was predictable right when they bought it. Thanks for the suggestions I’ll definitely check them out.
I am one of the many who downloaded the NIK collection for free to use as a plugin for Photoshop. I had a problem in the beginning but once learned NIK works great as a plug-in. No support remember it was free and discontinued but you can find plenty of help on the inter-net.
As an Adobe Lightroom user, once I finish editing a photo I export a JPEG of the image so that I will not lose processed photos in the event I decide to separate from Adobe.
Surely there is enough demand that someone will continue to offer the kinds of photo processing software that serious photographers require.
A few months back I was watching a video with Vincent Versace (employee #2 at Nik) and he said that the software was complete and had all the functionality it needed. So not the crisis that internet fora thrive on, sorry Spencer.
Vincent wasn’t the number two employee at NIK but he was their artist in residence and spokesperson (and is a talented artist and teacher). He joined NIK after they had been around for five or six years.
He’s correct in that it’s existing tools didn’t really need any development in features but that doesn’t mean new functionality wouldn’t be able to be created using their core technologies or improved. Snapseed came out long after their other plugins had come out for instance. As computers and other software programs progress and the day comes when Adobe changes it’s plugin requirements it would be great to have at least a couple people assigned to update NIK but that’s not likely to happen.
The software is great as-is, and I would agree that it is already “complete.” The problem is not that Google will stop adding new features to Nik software (which has been true for a long time now), but that they’re choosing not to provide software updates if Nik is incompatible with future operating systems. It’s certainly their right to do so — they own Nik, after all — but it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of photographers are upset at this development, since many use Nik on a regular basis. Google just signaled that Nik will eventually stop working on most people’s computers, even those who paid full price for it. This may take years to happen, but it’s impossible to know.
This, too, shall pass.
Nik is going away. Too bad. Not a great loss. Nik was an image development tool. There are still more image development tools available today than there were four years ago. Your problem is not a loss of options. A lot of new software is becoming available that challenges Lr and Ps. Your problem is that you don’t want to adapt to new tools. Do you still use VisiCalc?
There will be something better soon
Hi Spencer!
Very informative article.
After reading your article I am sure glad the type of photography I do I don’t have to worry about experiencing this with the photo editing software since I shoot JPEG and I appreciate Gordon Laing’s book ‘in camera’ who shoots without editing software.
Apple continues to update, Adobe stopped supporting PS going to the Cloud and now rents their software, and Alphabet/Google announces they’ve stopped NIK support. This is like a bad day at work. My workflow includes, among other softwares, a legacy version of Photoshop…PS6, it also includes NIK. In my opinion PS6/NIK are still the best photo editing softwares out there. When I read this I turned off my updates. Personally I don’t want to rent software because it will just cost more in the long run despite marketing retoric. So, I continue to explore options. Someone is going to fiill that vacuum, problem is…when?
Definitely, if there is a void, it will be filled – sooner or later.
For focus stacking – and in many other ways a viable Photoshop alternative as it stands now, check Affinity Photo.
Now I realize it may get swallowed by Google or someone else in the future, but customers still have a choice and I think anything is better than the subscription model.
Thanks for this article Spencer. You really got a point. I believe all photographers should be as much ready as possible for software and hardware changes and discontinued products. Sadly, this can be a widely used software, our DSLR system or lenses. Even if we like it or not, all companies main focus is making money.
Lots of interest here, clearly. Look after getting the news I downloaded the current version and then checked it against the first free version that I installed over a year ago – it is exactly the same version number. Google hasn’t changed anything at all in the time since it was made free.
Google never committed to maintain it for purposes of Adobe product compatibility, but it’s worth saying that Adobe has kept its products backward-compatible for some years and there is a large, rich ecosystem of free and paid third party plug-ins that Adobe seems to appreciate as a selling point. Also, with a bit more effort, it’s perfectly possible to use the current Niks as standalone apps without any Adobe products (or JRE, for that matter) on Windows.
Interesting — so, technically, they discontinued it the moment they made it free, and they only recently announced so.
That does show that we shouldn’t rush to conclusions about how soon this software will stop working on new operating systems. My guess is that it will last several years. For all I know, it could work just fine on operating systems a decade from now, or longer. The problem, I think, is that we just don’t know. And when it does fail, no one will be able to step in and save it.
Google working hard to become a bigger Yahoo.
If GIMP is for free, is it free to use for business as well? Im curious cus its still called open source sodtware instead of freeware. Open sourse does not mean free
Gimp is both, it’s right on their landing page.
“The Free & Open Source Image Editor
This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.”
Are the original developers of Nik still around? Can they relaunch? Is there enough interest to make it profitable?
Some of the NIK developers started the new company Macphun making similar software. It very good but so far has been Mac only. They are coming out with some Windows versions this fall. It’s not the same though. It doesn’t have the upoint technology that makes NIK so easy to use as the patents for that are now owned by Alphabet/Google.
I started using Nik when it became free. I often used it almost daily, then recently I started getting error messages while in Photoshop that Nik was causing problems. I continue to use CS5 and have refused to subscribe to the cloud for all of the reasons you wrote about. I would reboot only to have to take in and have the computer checked out. My Dell XPS was only two years old and no one knew how to fix the problem. So I purchased a new Dell and decided to keep the old one primarily for the Nik software. I have a much older Dell that I kept PS on. I downloaded Nik on my new computer and put it on a flash drive and transferred the software to the old machine and installed. I disabled the WiFi on it so there wouldn’t be any potential automatic updates, etc. So now my work flow goes like this: Work on photos on my new computer till I need to use Nik features, then save it to a flash drive, go to the old computer and work on those image files using Nik and saving back to the flash drive and going back to my new computer to finish the job. It is a PIA but it is the only solution I know now.
Great article by the way. I feel like you ghost wrote it for me!!
I use an HP Pavilion which I bought off-lease in 2013. I used NIK on every photo I keep (mainly tonal contrast). No problem at all.
I would be surprised, however, if your problems are caused by using a more advanced computer. More likely it’s a background program. There are several methods of killing these. I use CCleaner — not the best but free, plus you get a crap cleaner and a completely safe registry cleaner. Also, there’s a utility bundled with Windows but I forget its name.
You really didn’t think that Google would do anything but screw up a good plug-in, did you. I’m one of many that paid full price for a really good product when owned by NIK. Along came Google, offering it up for free to new customers. How does that idea cash flow?
I have Nik; haven’t used it for a while as I’m happy enough using ON1 raw as replacement for adobe so I really hope on1 doesn’t follow Nik — LR5 , on1 and microsoft ICE (panoramas and free) does it for me thankfully
I have been using Nik since it was a paid software with decent customer service. Love Viveza for color, especially scanned pinhole color negatives and SEP also mainly for black and white scanned pinhole negatives. Just processed 30 exhibition images with it. At least my computer is old so I can’t update my system any further than Mac OS10.11, where now Nik still works along with CS5 and LR6. I have On1 as well, but as some have said above, it feels kind of clunky.
Don’t you have to use NIK with a host program like Photoshop, Lightroom, or Bridge. When I installed NIK those are the only options I have. I don’t see how to install NIK as a stand alone program.
I’m not sure about on a Mac but on a Windows computer they will run as a standalone. Just find the folder they were installed into and open the executable file (.exe) for the particular program you want to run, you should be able to drag your image file into the program window. Keep in mind it will only open jpg or tiff files; so no raw files which means you should work on a copy as this isn’t non-destructive editing. If it won’t open your file that way for some reason you can also drag your image file directly onto the .exe icon and let go and it should open.
Jeffrey. I am running Windows, I followed your instructions, and it worked just as you said. Thank you!
You bet Rich, glad to help.
I was following the tutorials by legendary photographer Elia Locardi. He highly recommended Google Nik for editing. Unfortunately I do not know what to do now. I would love to hear his views since he mentioned that he himself was a Google Nik user for editing photographs. It is a really unfortunate policy decision from Google. This is what happens when you are left at the mercy of shark companies.
Please sign this petition and share it with others.
www.change.org/p/goo…e_petition
As a Lightroom CC subscriber, I received a survey from Adobe a couple of weeks ago asking my opinion about some “new” and “great” services they’re contemplating. From what I could decipher from the questions, it appears that they’re thinking of decoupling Lightroom CC from Photoshop, unless we want to pay double (or more) the current 10 bucks a month rate. Monopolies are BEST! So, as much as I like Nik, its demise may be the least of my concerns as I’ll probably be priced out of Adobe’s suite.
By the way, this is the best photography blog out there. Thanks for bringing your articles and insights to the community of serious photographers, even hobbyists like myself.
Spencer, interesting thoughts and work-arounds suggested.
Although I have downloaded the Nik suite and installed it in LR as a plug-in, I haven’t used it yet, due mainly to the need of TIFF files while I try to keep my edits as raw as possible (pun intended). For me it would be enough to deal only with the RAW files, not creating additional files to achieve the results I want – hence that’s why I haven’t give Nik a “serious” use so far, just the trial (but it is an amazing tool nonetheless, especially for B&W pictures).
Under this proposal, I ask if it is possible to achieve similar results in LR without using Nik. Maybe there should be a workaround in LR to achieve the same results, while the plug-in may make things faster/easier, one could achieve same results with LR only. What do you think?
Best regards,
Rafael
Someone on the Net had a great idea that Google should release the source code and make it open source. This way, the community can keep it going. However, if the code also include very valuable bits that drive Google photo machine then they might not want to share it.
I do not use any plugins with LR due to the fact that LR is slow as lawnmower. Any add-on would make LR unusable.
I find so many of the above comments interesting but stop and consider that most of them are posts from people that are obviously fairly sophisticated software users for their photography. Though most hard core commercial and advanced amateur photographers are in that category, think about the many long time casual photographers who love to photograph and use only the simpler software (or none at all) that allows for tweaking their photos a bit and do not care a whit about using the really sophisticated approaches that most advanced software users employ. I am a long time camera buff from the film days who used to do some wet darkroom work and who now uses digital cameras and some simpler photo editing tools like Lightroom 4 Adobe CS4 and previously NX-2. I know so many older photo buffs and many younger folks that come into our camera club who don’t want or don’t care to spend the time to master the advanced software let alone spend the money that Adobe now requires for their cloud. When I finally saved the bucks to purchase my D7000 then “whoops” CS4 won’t handle the raw files. Then Adobe squeezes everyone into gong the cloud route which people like myself simply will not do. And as we all know Google is evil to the core anyway.
My point is that I wonder just how many younger would-be photographers and older geezers like myself are seriously thinking about chucking the hobby entirely. The camera industry and its software adjuncts should seriously start considering the end result of their capricious actions such as the ones discussed in these posts. Such behavior could well kill the goose that laid the golden egg of amateur photography. I think we are already seeing a generation of potential amateur photographers who realize this and simply say the hell with that, I will just use my cell phone camera. DSLR sales reflect this. My two cents. – Sparky
Sparky,
Being an old photography ‘geezer’ myself, I won’t give up the hobby because it’s my ‘relief’ valve to unwind from the daily stress & /or grind.
But with that said I will admit I have returned to my pre-film days when I never developed my own film but tried to get it right out of the camera. I have a professional photographer to thank for that because at the time he told me he sent his film to a professional developer to be developed. He went on further and said I work 40 plus hours taking pictures I don’t want to spend more time developing my film when I can be spending time with my family & /or making more money with photo shoots.
Then when I switched to digital photography and like many others had these wild thoughts how I was going to edit my images into great images!
I purchased Photoshop Elements and upgraded a few times, purchased Photoshop, purchased Capture NX-1 and NX-2.
It seemed I’d start learning the tools in a program and then a new version came out. Then Nikon couldn’t use the U-Point technology when Google purchased NIK and I didn’t care for Nikon’s NX-D.
But the biggest frustration for me after switching to digital was I made very few actual prints so that made using the editing software difficult because I had to relearn some of the basic steps again because of the lack of regular use.
I then read Gordon Laing’s book ‘in camera’ which is a similar philosophy of that lesson the professional photographer taught me years ago.
I shoot JPEG strictly. If I have an image that I want a print of I will pay someone to edit it for me. But I’ve only made a handfull of prints.
In looking back at the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on photo editing software (that I ended up not using) I could have purchased more cameras or gear.
One last thing is you could say the camera manufacturers are following the editing software companies. They keep coming out with more megapixels and slight improvements and many people will buy it. That’s great if that’s what they want to do but for me why do I need a 25 or higher megapixels camera when I’m posting the image on social media or just storing them on my computer. I remember when a 3 and 5 megapixels camera could produce a good 8 x 10 and 11 x 14 quality image.
So I have even gone back to simpler digital cameras instead of thinking that I have to have the newest, more advanced, and more megapixels camera.
I’d use my cell phone more BUT I don’t like using the screen in bright sunlight because I can’t see my composition and for some of the photography I do it would be hard to take those pictures with a cell phone.
Best Wishes,
Duane
Hi Duane,
I am a retired professional who specialized in scenics for travel and textbooks. (No money in it now so I do what I want.) Back In The Day you had to shoot trannies; they were all that publishers would accept. That was because they wanted to see exactly what they were buying, so it was quite reasonable. But you had to get it right in the camera. You can’t adjust a slide.
But slides were enormously easier to work with in post-processing. Sort, number, label, store. Digital requires all these too, but it adds a bunch of other time consuming stuff.
I can sympathize with the right-in-the-camera approach. I decided to bracket my film with just two shots at +/- one third of a stop. Trannies blow out or block up in you sneeze at them. This made right-in-the-camera more difficult, but I learned a lot about photography that has served me well.
But what about digital? Trannies native format is colored chemicals on plastic. They are unchangeable. You can’t throw away any information. But you can throw away information with digital — and that’s exactly what you do when you shoot jpeg. You can always convert RAW to jpeg, but when you shoot jpeg the information is lost forever.
OTOH shooting jpeg for right-in-the-camera should make post a lot easier. I hate post.
Why not shoot RAW right-in-the-camera, then use your post software to convert to jpeg automatically? Store both copies. When you go to use one you can play with it in post or use the jpeg. Just a thought.
..as I’ve wrote – Fuji and their jpeg is a good work around from this. It also saevs a lot of pot capture time as well as in most cases gives you lighter camera.
-J
There are alternatives out there too. On1, DXO, etc. Not as good as Capture One or Lightroom but, will be, eventually.
I’m trying really hard to like on1 but it’s just not working out. I’ve been using on1 raw 2017 pretty heavily for at least 6 months and have been beta testing 2018. It’s really sluggish and feels clunky to me. It’s even slower than Lightroom. You can do more with it than you can in Lightroom but not more than with a Photoshop / Lightroom bundle. That goes for pretty much all the Lightroom competitors. Unless you’re someone who doesn’t use Photoshop there isn’t much benefit to using something other than Lightroom unless the added expense for the other program is irrelevant to you. I get why tethered shooters prefer Capture One but aside from that I believe it’s output quality compared to Lightroom is mostly hype and comes from Adobe haters and then you still need to buy into Adobe if you need other graphic or design software. Everywhere I look there are discussions about Lightoom replacements but that isn’t really the problem, there are a ton of them. What’s needed is a company to expand out an entire line of coordinated design software similar to Adobe’s offerings. The power of a suite of software that has similar toolsets and integration between apps overcomes most minor issues with any one particular app and Adobe controls that market. Corel used to compete in that space but seems to be barely hanging on now. Serif seems to be making some headway after trying for years. Most companies that have gone up against Adobe however have either been bought out then killed off by them or just out marketed.
Jeffrey, I have been trialing the current version of DXO PhotoLab, you know, the one with U-Point :-) I actually am finding this quite familiar, not surprising, in how this works when making Local Adjustments in the Customize section. Almost feels like the “old days”. I, as you, had great hopes when ON1 was announced.
Good for you, DXO! For NIK fans something to take a look at in my opinion. Nicest part is that you can revisit your local adjustments. I have not yet explored exporting to another application, such as NIK stand-alone or LR/PS, and how that works, but will be doing more this weekend as I have some time.
Double computer? I have six plus. All frozen on 10.10.5 Yosemite. All of my important software works on it, Aperture, Nikon Capture NX-2, NIK, etc. Adobe is becoming a thing of the past for me. Using Affinity 1.5.2, On1, MacPhun and others as mentioned above. Too bad for future Mac purchases with incompatible OS’s. Have 2 tricked out 2013 Mac Pros, a 2012 tower with powerful graphics and plenty of RAM on all, a Macbook Pro Retina mid 2015 with all the ports they removed on the new “improved” 2017, a 17″ Macbook Pro with DVD, iMac at the office, and several others, all running 10.10.5 to assure compatibility. Adobe is a thing of the past. Corporate scum. I have CS6 Production but really don’t use it. No new Macs coming in here with flavor of the year OS’s chasing the iPhone. BTW, have a 6S iPhone that will last a good long time and I don’t use the cloud for anything important anyway. Macs last a long time. I’m goo for about 10 years, I would guess. Then I will retire.
Should have read I’m good for about 10 years, I would guess. Then I will retire. After everything i want is fine art printed. Sorry no editing.
For amateurs a great option is Photolemur. It’s doing magic! :)
Seen thos today, there may be hope….
nikcollection.dxo.com/
I’m trying really hard to like on1 but it’s just not working out. I’ve been using on1 raw 2017 pretty heavily for at least 6 months and have been beta testing 2018. It’s really sluggish and feels clunky to me. It’s even slower than Lightroom. You can do more with it than you can in Lightroom but not more than with a Photoshop / Lightroom bundle. That goes for pretty much all the Lightroom competitors. Unless you’re someone who doesn’t use Photoshop there isn’t much benefit to using something other than Lightroom unless the added expense for the other program is irrelevant to you. I get why tethered shooters prefer Capture One but aside from that I believe it’s output quality compared to Lightroom is mostly hype and comes from Adobe haters and then you still need to buy into Adobe if you need other graphic or design software. Everywhere I look there are discussions about Lightoom replacements but that isn’t really the problem, there are a ton of them. What’s needed is a company to expand out an entire line of coordinated design software similar to Adobe’s offerings. The power of a suite of software that has similar toolsets and integration between apps overcomes most minor issues with any one particular app and Adobe controls that market. Corel used to compete in that space but seems to be barely hanging on now. Serif seems to be making some headway after trying for years. Most companies that have gone up against Adobe however have either been bought out then killed off by them or just out marketed.