‘Long ago’ I described my gripes with Nik 4 … Since then not much has changed (for me).
But compatibility issues set aside, I don’t feel the new user interface to be an ‘delight’
– instead darkish, low contrast, condensed look, small lettering, short sliders, tiny symbols, an almost endless row of settings (RHS), what DxO promotes as
The modules Silver Efex 3 and Viveza 3 already had been part of Nik Collection v4 and got a couple of (minor) changes. With Nik Collection v5 the modules Color Efex 5 and Analog Efex 3 inherited the new user interface.
While we now have additional global settings like ClearView or DetailExtractor,
the Selective Adjustments (= Control Points / user defined Local Adjustments) also got Luminance / Chrominance (in reversed order to PL) and Selective Tones (Highlights, Midtones, Shadows, Blacks),
which no doubt can be helpful, but cluttering the RHS menu does not improve the overview.
And not to forget details like
- Control Points not being kept when changing presets (to be applied to the new one)
- Negative Control Points no more showing the restricted mask
(an advanced feature from Nik 3.3, also available in PL)
As Nik Collection v5 continues to delete all previous versions, make sure to keep your installable old version in case you are not satisfied when testing.
[ I’m a long time Nik user – since Nik was NIK, long before the Google versions ]