NIK COLLECTION 3

DxO’s acclaimed editing suite adds a Perspective Efex plugin

- Rod Lawton

With the release of version 3, Nik Collection is now a set of eight plug-ins. Six were originally developed by Nik Software and sold individually, then bought by Google and sold as a single suite, with the addition of Analog Efex Pro; they were then discontinued and given away free, and finally rescued by DxO and relaunched as a commercial package.

During all that time, most of the plug-ins have hardly changed at all. DxO added En Vogue presets and new film looks in the previous version, but it’s DxO Nik Collection 3 that has had the biggest update, including the new plug-in. The rest, however, look very much as they always have. For most software that would be a bad thing, but the Nik Collection effects have a ‘timeless’ look about them and don’t seem to date at all.

It looks like bundling DxO PhotoLab with Nik Collection 2 was a shortlived experiment: it added value to the software but led to complicated upgrade routes and frustration for existing DxO PhotoLab users, who weren’t offered any price reduction despite having a key part of the software already – not to mention owners of other software who had no interest in paying for another image-editing program.

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