Good news today. DxO has acquired the Nik Collection from Google and has plans to continue development for the benefit of the photographic community. According to the press release from DxO, the current version will remain available on the DxO website but a new version will be developed for 2018.
Only a week ago we were asking readers to sign the “Save our Nik” petition and it seems coincidental that the acquisition has just been announced. No doubt it has been under discussion for some time.
We can all now relax and go back to using the suite. The one good thing Google did was to make it free, but that almost certainly led to the lack of interest in future development. I imagine DxO will wish to charge in future and that is only to be expected. I hope, however, the price is kept reasonable and, if possible, the marketing plan allows for individual parts of the collection to be bought separately. I really only use Silver Efex Pro and it would be a pity if the upgrade comes only as a package with a correspondingly hefty price.
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That’s a relief. I imagined that my old Mac (on which Silver Efex Pro works) would have to work on, well past normal retirement age.