The Nik Collection Offer

Let’s talk about the Nik Collection Offer.  In the spirit of bringing exceptional products to your attention, I periodically promote offers from some of the companies whose products I use. This offer for the Nik Collection v3 from DxO represents excellent value.

The Nik Collection Offer

I’ve been working with DxO products for a while now, I’ve been using Silver Efex Pro for many years, it’s hands down the best Black & White processor on the market and is a cornerstone of my black and white infrared processing work. It’s been such a long time I don’t exactly recall when, but I got hold of Color Efex too and from there the whole Nik Collection.

Over the years, the collection has changed hands a few times, but DxO bought the suite from Google in 2017 and I think this marked a change – Google had the best of intentions, but Photography was never their primary business and after a failed venture into Social Media, Nik seemed to languish on the back burner. No more!

DxO has breathed life into the suite and the latest release is something quite special. The Nik Collection Offer gives a great discount for lifetime ownership of a suite of tools that have been brought up to date and in many cases outperforms the best of the competition.

The Nik Collection 3.0.8

Silver Efex Pro 2

The original and the best black and white processor. Precision engineering on every shade of grey. A huge array of filters to apply plus the ability to emulate classic black and white film stock with uncanny accuracy. DxO drawing on a lifetime of expertise in this respect.

DFine 2

Noise Reduction. Noise is the bane of low light photography. DxO have brought DFine bang up to date with new technology.

Dfine is a wavelet noise-reduction tool based on algorithms. It transforms an image into a map of spatial frequencies and then identifies and removes unwanted noise. A spatial frequency is a way of describing an image by focusing on how pixels relate to each other. Dfine automatically identifies a few sample areas it believes are typical representations of the noise in an image.

Dfine then uses that custom noise profile to remove noise elements matching the profile from the entire image.

Analog Efex Pro 2

DxO have been collecting camera and lens characteristics for years. DXOMARK is a separate business providing comprehensive analysese of cameras and lenses. Some of this database is leveraged in Analog Efex, a unique range of tools and effects that can instantly produce the ‘look and feel’ of a bygone era. Recreate antique camera looks with authenticity.

Color Efex Pro 4

A comprehensive set (55) of filters for colour photography + a further 20 original processing recipes. Like every other app, this one leverages Nik’s U-Point technology which can be used to apply processing effects to precise areas of a photograph.

HDR Efex Pro 2

Tone mapping based HDR tool that is capable of immense subtlety as well as some of the wilder shores of HDR. Can also be used on single images. I’ve been in the habit of using Lightroom to merge my bracketed images, but this emphasis on natural-looking tones is a game-changer for this particular app.

Sharpener Pro 3

Sharpening that is customised for the actual use case of the image. If it’s intended for hi-resolution printing there is sharpening specifically for that purpose. This app is also able to apply selective sharpening to different areas of an image.

Viveza 2

The specialist colour grading app. Change colours, hues, tones, and saturation anywhere in an image

Perspective Efex

Saving the best for last. This is a new addition to the suite based on DxO’s viewpoint app. This addition alone makes the Nik Collection Offer irresistibly good value. I’m a big fan of Viewpoint, it does a brilliant job of straightening verticals in architectural photography and can be made to emulate the tilt/shift “toy town” look as well. Perspective Efex basically ports the core Viewpoint functionality and makes it compatible with the rest of the suite. Worth the price of entry on its own!

U Point Technology

It can’t be stressed enough that the Nik Collection is more than just a collection of filters. It includes a genuine game-changer that allows it to compete with the likes of Photoshop – U Point Technology.

U Point allows the user to drop a control point on any area of the photograph, adjust the size and apply all of the ‘normal’ grading effects ‘Exposure, contrast in addition to the effects pertinent to the particular tool being used, to pixels within the selected area that are similar to the precise point selected. (This does not apply to Perspective Efex for obvious reasons).

The Nik Collection offer is outstanding value for money. It’s user-friendly yet complex enough to be useful for professionals. I wouldn’t be promoting it if I didn’t use it!

UPDATE

Check out What’s New in Nik Collection 5

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