Google is now dishing out its Nik Collection at no cost.
The Nik Collection comes with seven desktop plug-ins that were originally targeted toward expert photographers. From its original price tag of $149, Google is now dropping its price to nothing.
“As we continue to focus our long-time 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 anyone can use it,” says Google in a blog post.
These seven desktop plug-ins that are now freely available to snag include Color Efex Pro, Analog Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro, Viveza and Dfine, along with Sharpener Pro.
Google says that the plug-ins bestow a great range of photo-editing abilities to their users. Some of these capabilities include sharpening to bring out the hidden details in a photo. Their filter applications are particularly valuable in enriching the color of the captured photo. On top of that, they are packed with retouching and creative effects, plus the ability to adjust the color and tonality of photos.
What’s great news for those who happened to buy Nik Collection earlier this 2016 is that Google promises to refund their money in full. The company says that it is going to automatically issue back to customers their money in the succeeding days.
The Nik Collection was initially housed under the management of Google when the company acquired German developer Nik for Snapseed, its mobile editing app. From $499.95, Google then trimmed the price of Nik Collection down to $149.
These plug-ins are all compatible with Lightroom, Photoshop and Aperture.
This latest move from Google, according to a report from the Verge, suggests that “Google isn’t interested in supporting further development of Nik’s software beyond Snapseed.”
In case you are interested in giving the Google Nik Collection a go, head to Nik Collection page to download it.
In November last year, Google also announced that it bought Fly Labs, the company behind several iOS apps for video editing. The Google Photos team then absorbed the team behind Fly Labs.
During the time, Fly Labs kept on offering the four apps, namely Fly, Clops, Crop and Tempo, for three months. Google also offered features that used to be in-app purchases free of charge.
