I could be wrong, but the latest changes to V7 of the Nik collection seems to say to me “NIK is no longer relevant for Photoshop/Lightroom users.”. I realize that DxO has their own editing platform, which I don’t use, but a LOT of Nik users do come from the Adobe platform. I don’t use V7, so I only know what I see from the advertising blurbs, but to me, what DxO did with V7 was to try and emulate Adobe’s masking features. Most of the tools in Nik are pretty useless IMHO. I do use Pro Contrast in Color Efx and I also use Silver Efx, but the other tools just seem “old”. They probably were great 20+ years ago, when Nik was first developed, but other than making them more “pretty”, they still seem to be very outdated to me.
I really don’t understand where DxO is going with Nik. What am I missing?
I cannot say - but some users love the Nik apps and some have no use for them.
Let’s just hope that investing in Nik was not a mistake like the one DxO made with their One camera.
I have tested Nik on and off and found that they are not for me on a regular basis and that they are too expensive to only use occasionally…specially considering that they also break the RAW workflow. Nevertheless, I can see some usability in pairing Nik with PureRAW. Combining too many of DxO’s products makes one pay for the same/similar features more than onece and waste drive resources, e.g. by having to download the very same modules, one each for Nik, PureRAW, FilmPack, ViewPoint and PhotoLab.
I do use Pure Raw 4, and love it. I find the NR much better than Adobe’s or Topaz’s. But I just don’t understand Nik - it seems like they’re throwing good money after bad.
Just relax and do your thing. If DxO is going broke or should be bought by someone else, it’s a pity for their interesting products and people loosing their jobs. But what can we do?
The latest changes in Nik 7 were all driven by user demand. They ran a user forum where users submitted a wish list of new features and all the stuff in Nik 7 is the stuff users requested. They’ve done a great job in giving us what we asked for, especially with the new masking tools. But Nik is complementary to Adobe, its U-Point masking works differently to Adobe’s AI and conventional masks that are nearly all area based selections. Nik is not an editor (Viveza excepted? And I think Viveza is on the way out now that its tools are in ColorEfex)) it is a styling tool for applying creative effects. You can probably do everything Nik does in Photoshop but it would take hours rather than minutes. And tools like Dfine and Output sharpener are unique so far as I can tell.
But if Nik doesn’t suit your workflow don’t use it!
only new feature in Nik 7 is polygone mask and switching from 1 plugin to another and they removed perspective. I’m not sure imo that’s worth upgrading from Nik 6 that have perspective which is viewpoint and contain everything filmpack offer including “preset” for those who like presets, so money for money Nik collection is cheaper than viewpoint and filmpack combined with some extra plugin. i know some people think of tiff file as jpeg, to each their own but there’s a lot to be work with in tiff file. some people use only 1 software so do what you want to do, your money, your editing, your pictures.
I have to agree with @bertsirkin on this one. Nik V2 was last before all UI started to be changed and Nik v6 is the one with all 7 plugin UI completed with the addition of perspective. so was that enough done or worth for you to move up to Nik 7?
It was by invitation to all/some? registered users. It ran for about 3 months before they shut it down. As for new features there are both polygon and luminosity masks. Also the control points are no longer circles but adjustable ellipses. Also the HSL, Grain and Clearview global filters in Color Efex have now been made into filters (so you can apply locally) The Luminosity masks incorporate Ansel Adams’ zone system (previously only on SilverEfex now universal) All of these were in the top list of requests and make Nik much more powerful. Switching apps was another high popularity request.
I agree it’s a shame that PerspectiveEfex has been dropped, I used it quite a lot, but they must have felt it was stealing too much from Viewpoint’s market.
PS I went through my old emails. Here is the url to one of the threads. It doesn’t work now but at least it identifies where the forum was…