Google Nik collection of Plug-Ins available free for download

[Dug]

I cannot comment on Silver Efex 1 & 2 but it looks like I have Analog Efex 1 & 2 co-existing.

I’m on CS6 and Win 7 Pro.

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks for the heads up.

I was going by how the softwares where labeled on the linked to download page.
They did not give version numbers.

Having now done the install it appears the plug ins are all the latest versions so I can probably uninstall my original Silver Efex 2 now since it is in a different install directory.


Also confusing on the linked to download page is this :

More affordable than ever
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.

There must be a better place to download the plugins that explains it in a more relevant up to date way.

Windows 10 installs don't appear to be an issue either.

[Mary Anne]

I tried a few out this morning sorry cannot remember which ones now, they worked ok with my CS6 on Win 7 64 bit.

[feathers]

I tried a few out this morning sorry cannot remember which ones now, they worked ok with my CS6 on Win 7 64 bit.

That's what l have. Will havalook. Cheers.

[arthurking83]

To further Tannin's comment re Google making a PS killer program ... it should be remembered that this Nik collection is a plugin for PS(or LR).
That is, Google are making PS and/or LR better with this product!
Why would they make such a product(Nik collection)free and then attempt to create a competing product(whatever new software) for the product(Adobe's) they just made better!

I haven't installed LR again with Win10, and as I don't have PS .. a plugin for those Adobe products don't really suit my purposes.

BUT!!!

You can run these (so called) plugins on their own, even if you don't have the required Adobe software installed.
All the Nik software is actually standalone software, it's just made so that it's linked to a plugin link via the respective Adobe software.
And you can run the Nik software without needing the Adobe software installed(or if you just simply wish to do so without the need for the Adobe software).

You need to locate the executable files for each respective Nik program.
To find the .exe, for example on a Windows 64bit system, it's most likely installed to C drive, Program files(not program files (x86)!), Google, Nik Collection, and from there under each respective directory appropriately named.

A few notes: you may find a Google directory in your Program Files (x86) folder too. That is almost certainly installed by Google because of Chrome trying to infest your PC in some way.
Mine exists because I actually use my Google Drive allocation .. I've lost count of how many times I've explicitly told Chrome to 'go away'. Not in that folder. If you have an x86 (32bit) PC .. that's be a very old or cheap system by the way!) .. then you won't have a Program Files (x86) folder .. it'd still be located in a folder called Program Files.

Anyhow, once you find those executable files(don't open them!! .. they will almost certainly be useless on their own like that).

What you need to do, is one of a couple of things(or both if you prefer).

1. to use the programs without the assistance of any other program, that it truly standalone .. easiest way to use them is to locate each exe file and right click it and send to .. desktop!!
Now you have a shortcut to the program on your desktop.
If having all those shortcuts on your desktop is cumbersome, you could create folder on the desktop and move them all to there.
But to get this to work, you just drag an image to the shortcut, and the respective program will then open with that image loaded.
You can't(or at least I can't) open the program and then load an image into it.

Note that it only really works (for me) on TIFFs and JPGS, I don't have any Adobe file types to try it on.
To exit the program you need to cancel or save the file. Note that saving the file always overwrites the original file you opened it with. If this is important to you then make sure you open the program with a duplicate file!!

2. Another way you can get these 'plugins' to operate is to link them to any software that has a 'Open With' routine.
The two that come to mind for me .. are ViewNX2(and CaptureNX-D) and Fast Stone Viewer(FSV).
Locate the option to add the executables to the software you prefer to work with and add it to the Open With dialogue option.

Works well with ViewNX2, that I initially tried(haven't yet tried FSV).
Another note for VNX2 users ... and I use VNX2 as an example as it's editing ability is pretty hopeless!! These Nik apps now help out enourmously tho!
The gotcha with ViewNX2 is that you NEED to convert any raw file you want to edit before you load it into any of those Nik apps.
This is primarily because the Nik software doesn't really recognise raw files, and also because when they save, they save to the original file that they were opened with.
There is a chance(although I think unlikely) they could corrupt your raw file .. as they don't recognise them!!.
What will most likely happen is that if you accidentally open a raw file in any of those Nik apps, and then save, it will simply throw an error saying can't save raw file type or something.

Also, you may think if you can open a raw file with the Nik software ... why .. !!!!
Even tho I opened an NEF file in one of those programs, the truth is that ViewNX2 didn't actually send it a proper NEF file, it created a temporary tiff file and the Nik program tried to save it as a NEF.

Just use tiff if you want high quality final edits!

Anyhow, it all works.
The dragging of images to the Nik shortcuts is a bit tedious, but does work .. is handy, just tedious.
Easier to get to them via another image viewing program, most of which will have an Open with option.
Unless you need Nikon's ViewNX2, I'd recommend FSViewer.

hope that helps.

[ricktas]

My Random thoughts;

1) Great move Google. Giving the Nik Collection away for free. I have used it for years. However, I reckon the directors etc of OnOne and more are thinking 'shit'. Everyone (well not quite everyone) jumps on the free bandwagon and suddenly all the other companies producing similar plugins are seeing sales of their products decimated. Oh and then in a few months time we hear Google acquires those companies at a 'firesale' price. Call me a cynic, but Google doesn't do anything without thoughts to the future.

2) Great move Google. Downloaded it now, last time I paid for a version was about 18 months ago.

3) Great move Google. Considering your snapseed App for mobile devices is built on the Nik Software engine, and mobile platform and 'Apps' seem to be the way forward, I have a sneaking suspicion that Snapseed will evolve as an App for desktops as well, and you will charge for it. Or (more likely) we will see desktop devices slowly disappear and 'mobile' devices will become the norm. Desktop devices will go the way of Kodak Film. Considering on the Android platform you have over 10,000,000 downloads. I cannot see how many on Apple Store. It would be interesting to know how many downloaded the desktop version in comparison. Wait for Snapseed Pro to appear in an (online) store near you, one day soon.

4) Great move Google. I am off to play with my new free toy...for now.

5) If you have not used snapseed on a mobile device : https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...snapseed&hl=en and : https://itunes.apple.com/EN/app/snap...439438619?mt=8

[antony]

I've been using onOne products since version 5, and been happily paying for upgrades on (almost) yearly basis. I hope Google's free move does not kill competitors.

[Tannin]

we will see desktop devices slowly disappear and 'mobile' devices will become the norm. Desktop devices will go the way of Kodak Film.

Not a chance. No-one who does actual work on a computer uses a phone or a tablet unless there is no choice at all. Real work needs a real screen and a real keyboard and a real pointing device. Not to mention proper storage and spare CPU cycles, though these last two are (at least in theory, if not in practice) possible to do on mobile. Screen and input devices are not.

Mobile devices make good telephones and excellent entertainment toys. They are very poor second-best choices for doing work on though, and always will be. It is not possible to make, for example, a proper keyboard smaller than about half a metre wide.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, I&M, it's all Adobe's fault. You'll never see me argue with that. But the point is that Photoslug is the only, repeat only way to use the Nik software unless you are one of the minority of photographers who happen to use Nikon. Canon, Pentax, Sony, and all other users are locked out. You can't buy it. (I know this because I have tried.)

Photoslug on its own is unpleasant but bearable and seldom crashes. Photoslug plus one Nik layer is more unpleasant and distinctly unreliable. Photoslug with two or more Nik layers is so bug-ridden and horrible I'd rather go swimming at Werribee. Compare with the various other Photoslug plugins I own - none of them cause problems. Only Nik.

-------------------------------

Edit: I just read Arthur's remarks. Ta mate, I'll have to try that!

[ricktas]

Not a chance. No-one who does actual work on a computer uses a phone or a tablet unless there is no choice at all. Real work needs a real screen and a real keyboard and a real pointing device. Not to mention proper storage and spare CPU cycles, though these last two are (at least in theory, if not in practice) possible to do on mobile. Screen and input devices are not.

Mobile devices make good telephones and excellent entertainment toys. They are very poor second-best choices for doing work on though, and always will be. It is not possible to make, for example, a proper keyboard smaller than about half a metre wide.

Sure, but we are already seeing the migration of 'Apps' to the desktop. I suspect in future we will have to use several to process our images to match what we can do now in one. After all. It is all about the $$. If they can sell us a heap of smaller Apps to do the job and push Apps as the way forward.. we will all be paying. Nothing at all to do with the end user, more to do with corporate greed..

[jim]

To further Tannin's comment re Google making a PS killer program ... it should be remembered that this Nik collection is a plugin for PS(or LR).
That is, Google are making PS and/or LR better with this product!
Why would they make such a product(Nik collection)free and then attempt to create a competing product(whatever new software) for the product(Adobe's) they just made better!

I haven't installed LR again with Win10, and as I don't have PS .. a plugin for those Adobe products don't really suit my purposes.

BUT!!!

You can run these (so called) plugins on their own, even if you don't have the required Adobe software installed.
All the Nik software is actually standalone software, it's just made so that it's linked to a plugin link via the respective Adobe software.
And you can run the Nik software without needing the Adobe software installed(or if you just simply wish to do so without the need for the Adobe software).

You need to locate the executable files for each respective Nik program.
To find the .exe, for example on a Windows 64bit system, it's most likely installed to C drive, Program files(not program files (x86)!), Google, Nik Collection, and from there under each respective directory appropriately named.

A few notes: you may find a Google directory in your Program Files (x86) folder too. That is almost certainly installed by Google because of Chrome trying to infest your PC in some way.
Mine exists because I actually use my Google Drive allocation .. I've lost count of how many times I've explicitly told Chrome to 'go away'. Not in that folder. If you have an x86 (32bit) PC .. that's be a very old or cheap system by the way!) .. then you won't have a Program Files (x86) folder .. it'd still be located in a folder called Program Files.

Anyhow, once you find those executable files(don't open them!! .. they will almost certainly be useless on their own like that).

What you need to do, is one of a couple of things(or both if you prefer).

1. to use the programs without the assistance of any other program, that it truly standalone .. easiest way to use them is to locate each exe file and right click it and send to .. desktop!!
Now you have a shortcut to the program on your desktop.
If having all those shortcuts on your desktop is cumbersome, you could create folder on the desktop and move them all to there.
But to get this to work, you just drag an image to the shortcut, and the respective program will then open with that image loaded.
You can't(or at least I can't) open the program and then load an image into it.

Note that it only really works (for me) on TIFFs and JPGS, I don't have any Adobe file types to try it on.
To exit the program you need to cancel or save the file. Note that saving the file always overwrites the original file you opened it with. If this is important to you then make sure you open the program with a duplicate file!!

2. Another way you can get these 'plugins' to operate is to link them to any software that has a 'Open With' routine.
The two that come to mind for me .. are ViewNX2(and CaptureNX-D) and Fast Stone Viewer(FSV).
Locate the option to add the executables to the software you prefer to work with and add it to the Open With dialogue option.

Works well with ViewNX2, that I initially tried(haven't yet tried FSV).
Another note for VNX2 users ... and I use VNX2 as an example as it's editing ability is pretty hopeless!! These Nik apps now help out enourmously tho!
The gotcha with ViewNX2 is that you NEED to convert any raw file you want to edit before you load it into any of those Nik apps.
This is primarily because the Nik software doesn't really recognise raw files, and also because when they save, they save to the original file that they were opened with.
There is a chance(although I think unlikely) they could corrupt your raw file .. as they don't recognise them!!.
What will most likely happen is that if you accidentally open a raw file in any of those Nik apps, and then save, it will simply throw an error saying can't save raw file type or something.

Also, you may think if you can open a raw file with the Nik software ... why .. !!!!
Even tho I opened an NEF file in one of those programs, the truth is that ViewNX2 didn't actually send it a proper NEF file, it created a temporary tiff file and the Nik program tried to save it as a NEF.

Just use tiff if you want high quality final edits!

Anyhow, it all works.
The dragging of images to the Nik shortcuts is a bit tedious, but does work .. is handy, just tedious.
Easier to get to them via another image viewing program, most of which will have an Open with option.
Unless you need Nikon's ViewNX2, I'd recommend FSViewer.

hope that helps.

All my Nik things wound up in their own little folder in Launchpad. And all (except Sharpener, for some reason) work fine if opened from there as standalone applications.

[Tannin]

Sure, but we are already seeing the migration of 'Apps' to the desktop. I suspect in future we will have to use several to process our images to match what we can do now in one. After all. It is all about the $$. If they can sell us a heap of smaller Apps to do the job and push Apps as the way forward.. we will all be paying. Nothing at all to do with the end user, more to do with corporate greed..

Yes indeed. We are seeing a progressive dumbing down of desktop software because of this very process. Exactly the same thing is happening only even more swiftly on websites. Less and less information on-screen already, and less and less power on the desktop as time goes by. And a very similar process seems to be infecting product design in all sorts of areas. So many new manufactured products are cheap, look attractive on first glance, and last about ten minutes before you discover that they are incapable of doing what you bought them to do in the first place. (Just like most apps!) The whole world is dumbing down around us.

Thankfully, some of the great intellectual challenges of our time remain as puzzling as ever, such as (for example) mastery of quantum chromodynamics, the real cause of idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and making Photoshop produce the colours you expected in the first place.

[arthurking83]

All my Nik things wound up in their own little folder in Launchpad. And all (except Sharpener, for some reason) work fine if opened from there as standalone applications.

I don't know what "Launchpad" is .. so can't comment on that.
(is that a Windows PC thing?)

The issue with launching the (respective)programs, or apps, or executable directly via the executable is that there is no interface within the apps window to open any file.
So the only way to get a file into the program is to drop the file directly onto the executable or to invoke the executable via any other image program that can call on it to open with a file preloaded.


With the Sharpener program, note that there are two executables for it too.(I should have mentioned that earlier).

One is to open the Pre-Sharpener program, the other is to invoke the Output Sharpener program.
On a Windows system, the Pre-Sharpener program exe is called SHP3RPS(.exe) and the Output Sharpener exe is called SHP3OS(.exe).

[jim]

It's a Mac thing. Maybe it's different in Windows but I get a File menu at the top of every standalone app except Sharpener. (Which doesn't bother me as there are better options than either Sharpener or Dfine.) Silver Effix though is invaluable and Viveze also looks useful the few times I think to play with it. Both are perfectly well behaved standalone programs.

[Tannin]

Arthur, you could always add the programs to your right-click context menu. Then you could just open a folder full of images, right-click a TIFF, and select "open with Dfine" (or whichever other). See http://www.howtogeek.com/107965/how-...-context-menu/ for a bit of a walk through.

[arthurking83]

Adding to context menu sounds interesting.
The only problem with that is, Nikon's viewnx2 doesn't use Windows context menu system. It uses its own.
But if I'm browsing images via Windows explorer, the context menu makes perfect sense too.

Sent from my HUAWEI MT7-L09 using Tapatalk

[CabanSail]

I downloaded the package. Wanted to play with Silver Efex as so many people have told me it's the duck's wobbly bits.


They are partly right. It's the wobbly bits. It was fast enough but seems to be a suite of buttons and sliders. I prefer to know what is happening under the bonnet and fiddle there if needed.

I know that I am the one out of step and that's fine. Will continue to use PS until someone releases something that will replace it and be less annoying.

[arthurking83]

So I have the plugins loaded for VNX2 to open then via the toolbar such as this:



You can see the easy peasy links in the toolbar up top. Makes the toolbar a bit cluttered if you already have it full, but mine was fairly empty anyhow.

Had a quick ping at Silver Efex on an image just now:
For some reason, when I sent it too Silver Efex, it gave an error when initialy trying to open it .. "unsupported file format" or some weird message like that.
I converted the raw file this image was based on in VNX2 as a jpg(largest size for more working data in the plugin) .. and it doesnt' support jpg format?
Clicked OK on the message window only to have it thrown up again .. and again. On the fourth click of OK .. it then opened the jpg without any issues!

anyhow: Silver Efex and the film noir treatment:



So the workflow is .. tweak the raw(NEF in this instance) file in the capable converter, hit the open with link to get it into the plugin and go.
I normally don't do this kind of stuff myself personally, and again for personal reasons, I'd prefer the final edit on the actual raw file too .. but this is an interesting way to add some ability in an otherwise fairly inadequate software like VNX2.

[Mark L]

Many words in this thread. Reckon a lot of them don't address

The Google Nik collection of Plug-Ins looks like it’s now available free for download.

So is the Nik Collection worth having? (guess it must be since nardes posted it).
What can it do for me? (Love Nik because ..... . It makes it easy to do ..... )
Any tutorials to help me learn what it may be able to do for me?

[arthurking83]

Many words in this thread. Reckon a lot of them don't address

So is the Nik Collection worth having? .....
Any tutorials to help me learn what it may be able to do for me?

Summarised reply:

Yes.
Don't need them.

Long reply:

It's worth a try!
As it's free, you can simply download it(taking into account any download limitations) .. and load it up with your preferred editor.
if you don't like it, uninstall it.

Most of the programs are easy enough to use without the need to use any tutorials.

eg. the Silver Efex doodle I used in the above example was a very quick style selection that is available on the LH pane.
It gives you a large thumbnail sized preview on the LH navigation pane of what the image you just loaded will look like, and you just click that.
It has a named style(eg. the one I used was called Film Noir 3, and there were Film Noir 2 and 1 before that one).
Once I clicked that, I wanted a slight tweak to the overall look, and it gives you the ability to use control points to edit the image locally.
I used just a single control point (in my sample mono image) on my son's face to brighten it up and lower contrast and that's it.
The image I loaded though was a large sized converted jpg(from an NEF file) which was flattened in terms of contrast/colour and exposure.
So where the original colour image had a lot of contrast(blown highlights on my daughter's skin) and some very dark areas via the std picture style set in camera, I changed that in VNX2 to Flat Picture Control dropped exposure by -0.7Ev to restore skin highlight detail which obviously gave back lots of detail, but look totally flat in terms of contrast and colour.

In the sample image Silver Efex created the border too. Enough slides on the RH pane of the program to tweak a little here and there .. pretty basic stuff, even for a novice user with minimal PP experience.

[Gazza]

So is the Nik Collection worth having? (guess it must be since nardes posted it).
What can it do for me? (Love Nik because ..... . It makes it easy to do ..... )
Any tutorials to help me learn what it may be able to do for me?

"So is the Nik Collection worth having?"....as Arthur says, it's free...go for it

"What can it do for me?" ... Define 2 is an excellent NR tool and Colour Efex has great contrast features -

"Any tutorials to help me learn what it may be able to do for me?" Here's a quick for easy to understand lessons/tutorials that will take you through each module and has been created by Google(?)



When you have finished playing with Define, Silver Efex, colour Efex or whatever, you'll end up with a new layer...simply lower the opacity if you've gone overboard or add a 'Mask' to paint away what you don't want...sounds simple ah?


In summary, once you've got your head around 'Control Points' and a few shortcuts....it's quick and painless, embrace and enjoy

[Mary Anne]

Thanks for the link Gazza and the Tips