Nik Collection is now *FREE*

[digitaldog]

I don't understand the logic here. If you give something away free it attracts more users, so there could be, if anything, MORE requests for support.

But since the product is free, presumably 'as is' the company is in no way expected to provide support. User to user support is the next step.

[Mark D Segal]

Do they say that's part of the deal. If they don't, it's very poor PR.

[digitaldog]

Do they say that's part of the deal. If they don't, it's very poor PR.

I don't know that they have to say more than what they said:

Today we’re making the Nik Collection available to everyone, for free. Photo enthusiasts all over the world use the Nik Collection to get the best out of their images every day. As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it. The Nik Collection is comprised of seven desktop plug-ins that provide a powerful range of photo editing capabilities -- from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.Starting March 24, 2016, the latest Nik Collection will be freely available to download: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll automatically issue back to you in the coming days.
We’re excited to bring the powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people now.

[Mark D Segal]

Fine, exactly my point. They say nothing about reducing or discontinuing whatever support they provided before, so perhaps that is a non-issue.

[rdonson]

For those who are wringing their hands over the Nik Collection being free...

There were some updates to the collection AFTER Google bought them.  Not many but a couple.  Google bought them and basically ported the Snapseed functionality to the web.  You'll see this if you're using G+ or Google Photos.

The Nik collection hasn't been updated over several releases of CC and still works fine.  Do you think Adobe is likely to change the plugin architecture?

Lastly if you have to pay for this kind of functionality to have some peace of mind please check out the offerings from MacPhun.

https://macphun.com/

Many of the MacPhun staff are former Nik employees.

[Rhossydd]

Do you think Adobe is likely to change the plugin architecture?

It wouldn't surprise me now, but I won't care. There are plenty of others editors that won't change.

[Rhossydd]

They say nothing about reducing or discontinuing whatever support they provided before,

What puzzles me is why you'd expect a company to provide any support for a free product they receive no revenue from.

[Mark D Segal]

What puzzles me is why you'd expect a company to provide any support for a free product they receive no revenue from.

If they are thinking beyond the front of their noses, which is possible. Think medium to long term business development strategy. Not at all unusual.

[AlterEgo]

What puzzles me is why you'd expect a company to provide any support for a free product they receive no revenue from.

sometimes you provide a certain amount of support/development contribution to support the whole eco system from where you then make a good revenue from enterprise support - case in point RedHat

[TRANTOR]

Do you think Adobe is likely to change the plugin architecture?

What reason to change the plugin architecture?

[digitaldog]

Adobe plug-ins agriculture has changed over the years. Or lets put it this way; updates to Photoshop are known to provide issues for plug-ins over the years.

[TRANTOR]

No significant changes since CS4 as I can see. No problems here, if you are developer with straight hands. =)

[Simon Garrett]

For those who are wringing their hands over the Nik Collection being free...

There were some updates to the collection AFTER Google bought them.  Not many but a couple. 

There have been 14 updates since Google bought them.  I don't know whether that counts as "many", but it's more than a couple.  It was updated last summer for compatibility with the CC 2015 release of PS and LR.  There have been no updates since July 2015, which supports the suggestion that they don't want to upgrade it any more.  We'll see I guess. 

However, there's really no lock-in.  Really nothing lost in downloading and installing it. 

[jrp]

(I think that Picasa is now discontinued. )

[rdonson]

Here's a list of the Nik updates

https://support.google.com/nikcollection/answer/4400822?hl=en

Picasa still exists although it will be shuttered and superseded by Google Photos.  They haven't published an API yet for Google Photos whereas they have one for Picasa.  I suspect that if the API gets announced then Picasa will die quickly afterwards.

https://picasa.google.com/

[Tim Lookingbill]

Just speculation based on observing internet dynamics for over ten years, but seeing Google's stock price doesn't seem to take a hit when offering their stuff for free, couldn't this be seen as a way for Google to generate more ad driven site activity across the web in general which in turn gets folks to search on tutorials or discussions on how to use free software?

As an example of this kind of internet dynamic in the past days I was spending so much time researching an ELO "Out Of The Blue" CD that came out in 2007 that had been remastered. I couldn't believe how much online talk was generated by not only music sites but also sound engineer forums offering their opinions and technical details on past re-issue comparisions. Pages and pages show up on Google about this.

All that over a $10 re-issue of a '70's album I never heard but was familiar with the hits off it played in constant rotation over the radio back then.

And see, I'm talking about it again to you folks. Now what were we talking about? Oh! Nik Collection is for free. I just paid $8 for "Out Of The Blue" album. Why do I feel so used all of a sudden? 

[kencameron]

Just speculation based on observing internet dynamics for over ten years, but seeing Google's stock price doesn't seem to take a hit when offering their stuff for free, couldn't this be seen as a way for Google to generate more ad driven site activity across the web in general which in turn gets folks to search on tutorials or discussions on how to use free software?

Sounds very plausible. If the level in the wine bottle were a bit higher, I might at this point try to find how much of its income Google makes by selling things other than advertising. Also, it is time to take the dog for a walk.

[earlybird]

Snapseed

[rdonson]

Sounds very plausible. If the level in the wine bottle were a bit higher, I might at this point try to find how much of its income Google makes by selling things other than advertising. Also, it is time to take the dog for a walk.

Just follow Alphabet's (Google is one unit) earning reports.  They make money off a lot of things other than advertising.  The whole premise of Alphabet, Google's now parent company, was fiscal discipline.  Advertising is definitely the big dog for them but they also sell a lot of cloud services, Google Fiber, etc.

[Robert DeCandido PhD]

Update: Mar. 29, 3:16pm EST: Google confirmed to Quartz that the Nik Collection will continue to be updated for compatibility with other operating systems and programs, including Lightroom and Photoshop, but there will be no new versions of the suite in the future.