Google’s Free Photo Editing Software, the Nik Collection, Has Been Acquired by DxO & Will Live Another Day

In March of 2016, read­ers thrilled when Google announced that it made the Nik Col­lec­tion, its pro­fes­sion­al pho­to edit­ing soft­ware, free to down­load and use. Pre­vi­ous­ly priced at $149, the now-free soft­ware gives users access to “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.”

If there was cause for cel­e­bra­tion, it did­n’t last that long. Ear­li­er this year, Google fol­lowed up with anoth­er announce­ment–that it planned to dis­con­tin­ue devel­op­ment of the Nik Col­lec­tion, and essen­tial­ly let it with­er on the vine.

Now here’s the lat­est chap­ter in the sto­ry. A seem­ing­ly good one. The image pro­cess­ing com­pa­ny DxO has acquired the Nik Col­lec­tion from Google. Jérôme Ménière, DxO’s founder and CEO, declared in a press release, “DxO rev­o­lu­tion­ized the image pro­cess­ing mar­ket many times over the years with its inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, and we will con­tin­ue to do so with Nik’s tools, which offer new cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ties to mil­lions of pho­tog­ra­phers.” Appar­ent­ly the Nik Col­lec­tion gets to live anoth­er day.

If you head over to DxO’s web­site, you can still down­load the cur­rent Nik Col­lec­tion for free. You sim­ply need to pro­vide your email address, and they’ll send a down­load link to your inbox.

Also on the DxO web­site they’ve announced plans for a future iter­a­tion of the Nik Col­lec­tion, say­ing “The new ‘Nik Col­lec­tion 2018 Edi­tion’ will be released mid-2018, please leave your email below to be informed when it’s avail­able.” Whether that 2018 edi­tion will stay free remains to be seen.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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