I plugged along with the plugins which fortunately continued to work despite Windows and Adobe updates. This meant Google had lost interest in the Nik Software and it would no longer get updated. Worse than that though I knew what this really meant. Im ok with free if it was free to me too.

That’s right I spent $750 for plugins that were now free to the world. Again life was good until I received yet another email from Jean that Google was now giving away the Nik Collection for free. There was a plus side I wanted a copy to use at a second location so the $149 wasn’t a difficult decision. I was bummed because i spent so much and admittedly this put the software within reach of a lot more people reducing the uniqueness of the software. About a year later I got a message from a friend Jean Ramirez at Jean Ramirez Photography that Google had bought Nik Software and they were now offering the collection for $149.95. To buy the plugins individually was very expensive so I decided to buy the entire package called the “Nik Collection” for $499.95. Naturally I tried the Photoshop and Lightroom Demo of all of the plugins.I loved them. Sharpener Pro 3.0 – The most advanced, powerful, and complete sharpening solution for photographers.Silver Efex Pro 2 – The world’s leading black and white imaging software.Color Efex Pro 4 Complete Edition – The photographer’s choice for photographic filters.

HDR Efex Pro – The new professional standard for powerful realistic and artistic HDR imaging.

Viveza 2 – Powered by U Point® technology, Viveza 2 is the most powerful and precise tool available to globally or selectively control light and color in photographs without the need to create complicated selections or layer masks.

Dfine 2.0 – Best-in-class noise reduction to improve the quality of virtually every photo.

Several years ago I noticed that a lot of the professional photographs I really like were edited in one way or with plugins plugins from a company called “Nik Software”.

The nik collection free download