Google Makes Its $149 Photo Editing Software Now Completely Free to Download

nik software

Google’s Nik Col­lec­tion, a pho­to edit­ing soft­ware pack­age designed for pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers, once retailed for $149. Today it’s absolute­ly free to down­load, for both Win­dows and Mac users.

Here you can read Google’s announce­ment, which includes more infor­ma­tion on the soft­ware pack­age and its capa­bil­i­ties.

Today we’re mak­ing the Nik Col­lec­tion avail­able to every­one, for free.

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.

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.

We’re excit­ed to bring the pow­er­ful pho­to edit­ing tools once only used by pro­fes­sion­als to even more peo­ple now.

Once you’ve down­loaded the soft­ware, head over to the Nik Col­lec­tion chan­nel on YouTube where you’ll find video tuto­ri­als, includ­ing the one below called “Intro­duc­tion to the Nik Com­plete Col­lec­tion.” It’s a good place to start.

PS: Some read­ers have asked whether this soft­ware can work as a stand­alone pro­gram, or whether it needs to run with a pro­gram like Pho­to­shop. Here’s what PC Mag­a­zine has to say about that:  “Though you can run the sev­en dif­fer­ent plu­g­ins in the col­lec­tion as stand­alone prod­ucts, they tend to work bet­ter when you inte­grate them into an exist­ing image edit­ing pro­gram, like Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop. ‘(On Win­dows) You can make short­cuts to the indi­vid­ual .exe files on your desk­top and then just drag stacks of images onto them,’ sug­gest­ed one Google+ user.” In short, you have some options.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

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Comments (48)
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  • Sandy says:

    Thanks for mak­ing so much free for us. I appre­ci­ate it.
    Bless­ings to all. Sandy

  • CMD says:

    says for a free 15 day tri­al…

  • Packy Anderson says:

    Except you need expen­sive soft­ware to run it. It’s not “pho­to edit­ing soft­ware”, it’s “plu­g­ins for Pho­to­shop, Light­room or Aper­ture.”

    • Dan Colman says:

      Packy,

      That runs a lit­tle counter to what I have read else­where. For exam­ple PC Mag says: “Though you can run the sev­en dif­fer­ent plu­g­ins in the col­lec­tion as stand­alone prod­ucts, they tend to work bet­ter when you inte­grate them into an exist­ing image edit­ing pro­gram, like Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop.”

      It seems like you do have the option to use it as a stand­alone. And oth­er reports seem to back that up. But if I am wrong about that, my apolo­gies.

      Dan

  • Kiden says:

    Well, appar­ent­ly you can’t use this unless you already HAVE pho­to edit­ing soft­ware. So glad I wast­ed my time down­load­ing and try­ing to install this.

  • Kathy says:

    Where does it say 15 days free tri­al??

  • Imran says:

    This is great for those of us who did­n’t buy it the first time out like myself. Now imag­ine how the users that paid US$149 for it before it became free feel about this? Food for thought.…lol

  • Bob says:

    On the first page: “You don’t have to choose between plug-ins — now you get the full set for one low price. You can take the whole col­lec­tion for a spin with a 15-day free tri­al.”

  • Gimp says:

    Add it to Gimp then. GIMP IS also FREE.

  • Tlalolin says:

    Thanks Google, many Thanks, i apre­ci­ete this!

  • Simon Wilson says:

    Mine did­n’t cre­ate Start Menu or Desk­top icons although if you go into C:Program Files/Google/Nik Col­lec­tion using a File Explor­er you will find a fold­er for each of the pro­grams con­tain­ing the 8bf pho­to­shop plu­g­in files and also an exe­cutable file which runs the soft­ware in its own win­dow. Checked and works in Win­dows 8.

    You can if you wish right-click those exe­cuta­bles, select Cre­ate Short­cut, and drag the new­ly cre­at­ed short­cut file to your desk­top or start menu (or oth­er dashboard/toolbar apps you use) to gain quick­er access.

    Hope that helps.

  • Hannah says:

    Per Google: The Nik Col­lec­tion is a set of sev­en plug-ins for Adobe Pho­to­shop, Adobe Light­room, and Apple Aper­ture. The tool­bag includes vin­tage cam­era fil­ters, black-and-white con­trols, HDR effects, noise reduc­tion, col­or cor­rec­tion, col­or enhance­ment, and sharp­en­ing. The entire suite is now avail­able as a free down­load from Google on either Mac or Win­dows.

    So unless you have Pho­to­shop, Light­room or Aper­ture, Nik will just be a space waster on your com­put­er.

  • satyanarayan vaishnav says:

    wel­come to my home

  • Regev Porat says:

    Can’t open file for edit? prob­lem solved!

    If you tried to open a file in “Dfine 2” (or oth­er tool of the Nik Col­lec­tion suit) but could­n’t (because you don’t have Pho­to­shop or oth­er sup­port­ed appli­ca­tion), here is a sim­ple solu­tion I’ve found:

    1) Open com­mand line win­dow (hit Win­dows key + R, and type: cmd, and then hit Enter.
    2) Find the Nik Col­lec­tion suit, typ­i­cal­ly installed to:
    C:\Program Files\Google\Nik Col­lec­tion.
    3) Open the “Dfine 2” fold­er.
    4) Drag “Dfine2.exe” and drop it in the black com­mand line win­dow.
    5) In the com­mand line win­dow, hit space (“ ”).
    6) Now find the image file you wish to edit, and drag it into the black com­mand line win­dow, and hit Enter.
    The tool will open with the image file ready for action.

    * Thanks for post­ing about this free tool!

  • Duncan Booth says:

    A quick search seems to indi­cate that the Nik plu­g­ins can be used from Paint.Net via its PSFil­ter­PDN plu­g­in. If so that gives you a com­plete­ly free option.

  • Sari says:

    No, You can add them to Pho­to­shop OR you can use them as stand alone prod­ucts. Read the arti­cle.

  • Sari says:

    Per the arti­cle:
    “Though you can run the sev­en dif­fer­ent plu­g­ins in the col­lec­tion as stand­alone prod­ucts, they tend to work bet­ter when you inte­grate them into an exist­ing image edit­ing pro­gram, like Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop. ‘(On Win­dows) You can make short­cuts to the indi­vid­ual .exe files on your desk­top and then just drag stacks of images onto them,’ sug­gest­ed one Google+ user.” In short, you have some options.

    Read­ing is fun­da­men­tal.

  • jack says:

    I just tried to down­load it and it was­n’t free, it costs $19.99. What did I miss?

  • Tpaine says:

    It’s a nice fea­ture but its basi­cal­ly light effects and fil­ters. In my opin­ion it was­n’t worth the mon­ey but its a nice tool for quick edit­ing, spe­cial­ly free.

  • Orlando says:

    Thanks Google, Great pho­to edit­ing plug-in!

  • Cy says:

    Sari. Being a rude moron is not required.

  • daedrys says:

    They offer win­dows 10 free, now they are offer­ing this soft­ware free, I sus­pect (am just spec­u­lat­ing) that they secret­ly bun­dle spy soft­ware into it. THAT is the goal of the big com­pa­nies here.

  • Thank you Google i realy need it this for mi logo cre­ations and now it’s free to use. What can i say google was an unique way to impress me every time
    Thank you for the post

  • Emar says:

    But Gimp is not avail­able for Mac :-(

  • Evelyn Mark says:

    Please down­load edit­ing soft­ware.

  • Lananh Nguyen says:

    I can open pic­ture through Nik plu­g­ins HDR Fex pro 2 fol­low this instruc­tion i found in this web­site http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3454174 The answer states that, “HDR Efex is the only one which has a file open menu though; so maybe that is why Nik speak specif­i­cal­ly of it work­ing stand­alone.” I don’t have Adobe pho­to­shop, Light­room or aper­ture. Hope it helps Lananh

  • Chris Feather says:

    how do you use this with paint.net ?

  • Anthony says:

    Great soft­ware tools for post pro­cess­ing. Too many fab­u­lous things you can do with it, and it’s easy and intu­itive to use.

    Hope the devel­op­ment does­n’t stop now it’s free and Google is focussing on Google pho­tos instead…

    The refund for 2016 works, I already received my mon­ey back with­in a day. Great ser­vice but con­tin­ue updat­ing Google!

    See exam­ples of using the Nik col­lec­tion:
    Insta­gram @verolme
    http://www.anthonyverolme.com

  • Attaullah says:

    Pho­to edi­tor i want

  • John says:

    Google, an evil fas­cist com­pa­ny, as always stabbed small busi­ness­es and cap­i­tal­ism in the back!

    Free soft­ware is NOT free, it is a lie, some­one pays! So who pays for it this time?

    This is a stab­bing in the com­pa­nies who cre­ate such soft­ware for liv­ing, and now the Fas­cist Nazi sup­port­ing Google, take their bread. (The proof that google are Fas­cists is in the def­i­n­i­tion of Fas­cism. The proof the Google are NAZI is in Google maps, which still show Crimea as part fo the NEO-NAZI regime in Ukraine.)

    A sad sto­ry, I am sor­ry for all those hard work­ing peo­ple try­ing to make liv­ing with soft­ware devel­op­ment of such soft­ware.

    So who pays? From where Google get’s the mon­ey to pay on aver­age 120,000 pa for a decent devel­op­er for soft­ware they give away? What goes Google ben­e­fit from this?

    HOW DOES GOOGLE BENEFIT FROM THIS?

    And by the way, Why are the antitrust laws not enforced? i.e. Google should have been bro­ken to small­er com­pa­nies long time ago is the anti-trust lawas were enforced.

  • Kelly says:

    4 of the 7 can be used as stand alone — the sharp­en, Dfine & Viveza are plug ins that require pho­to­shop. Col­or Efex, HDR, Ana­log and Sil­ver Efex have a file open menu.

  • Tom Tom says:

    Umm is this sup­posed to work??

  • Ashlee O'Neill says:

    Where do you go to get the free down­load? The Nik site?

  • Walt Landers says:

    well…I uploaded it, and the pro­gram has no help or man­u­al to fol­low, so I loaded pho­tos from my com­put­er, face­book, and saw them on the side. Then I hit edit. All dis­ap­peared. I guess I don’t get it.

  • wamble says:

    I pulled and installed it. Works well. I think soft­ware like this should always be free. We’re past the point of bick­er­ing over pho­to manip­u­la­tion in 2016. ARE YOU NOT?

  • PicturePlay says:

    I’ve tried to down­load it and it always fail.

  • Yousup says:

    This post is very great.
    Because This Pho­to Edi­tor is very pow­er­ful to cus­tomiz­ing any pho­to pic­tures with styl­ish col­or, frame, effects and back­ground etc and any oth­er tools.

  • Taj khan says:

    Your image edit­ing post is more effec­tive and more necessary.thanks for this best idea.

  • Madrell says:

    Thank you Google i actu­al­ly would like it this for mi emblem cre­ations and cur­rent­ly it’s unen­gaged to use. What am I able to say google was asso­ciate dis­tinc­tive thanks to impress Maine on every occa­sion. Nik is so nice with me and I enjoy to use it. What­ev­er very help­ful and read­able post thanks for share it. See you again.

  • Madrell says:

    Thank you Google i actu­al­ly would like it this for mi emblem cre­ations and cur­rent­ly it’s unen­gaged to use. What am I able to say google was asso­ciate dis­tinc­tive thanks to impress Maine on every occa­sion. is so nice with me and I enjoy to use it. What­ev­er very help­ful and read­able post thanks for share it. See you again.

  • Jillian says:

    Great news for those who have nev­er tried Nik.

    For me, this just means that the soft­ware I loved and used for years is dead now.
    I use Mac­phun apps (http://macphun.com/) as an alter­na­tive now, but I still miss Nik.

  • Matt says:

    That would be Ramon Fadli.

  • Morry says:

    I have been using Picasa for years. How would down­load­ing NIK work with what I already have in my iMac com­put­er (Picassa3)?
    mor_kor

  • Magda says:

    For peo­ple with OLD OSes only: “com­pat­i­ble with Mac OS X 10.7 through 10.10; Win­dows Vista, 7, 8”.

    What a non-sto­ry…

  • Carol Andersen says:

    Can’t wait to try this — you have such great con­tent Open Cul­ture! I fol­low you on Twit­ter & Face­book so I don’t miss any­thing.

  • Sam says:

    Hi,
    Is pre­paid cred­it Card accept­able ?

  • G N king says:

    G bpb­sp

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