Nik Collection 7 By DXO

Many years ago Nikon had their own post processing software (Capture NX2), which personally, as a Nikon user, I found exceptionally good as it offered an alternative approach to the Adobe Photoshop approach. For me the key difference at the time was an aspect called control points which allowed controlled localised adjustment in many ways not dissimilar to the new masking options Adobe have recently introduced to Lightroom and camera raw. In the early days before Lightroom Photoshop and Elements were the only photo editing tools of any note available to photographers. It is interesting however Photoshop was originally targeted as a graphic design tool - not a photography editing tool. This is why Adobe subsequently brought out Lightroom to fill the gaps that photographers needed, not catered for in Photoshop. Capture NX2 however was actually designed as a photo editing platform.

The problem was Nikon pulled out of this aspect of the photography market and sold Capture NX2 to Google who tweaked it and rebranded it more as a Photoshop plug in Nik Efex and it worked very well. They kept the good aspects of the functionality and integrated it smoothly with Photoshop as a plug-in, however it stagnated as a product under Google who did not develop it as needed.

As often happens Google then decided this was not part of their core business and DXO picked up the product. Credit to DXO they did appear to learn from Googles errors and actively developed and grew the product and associated support to what it is today.

So that is in summary my understanding of how we got to where we are today, however that's fairly unimportant as we want to look forward and get to a place where we can process great images in a style we want and in a fast and efficient manner..

I have long been a fan of the old Nik Efex, as it was a fast and efficient processing tool that delivers the flexibility and quality I was looking for whilst also being a nicely integrated Plug-in. I have however been using this same old version of the software for many many many years now, as I felt it delivered what I needed and cost me nothing - why change a winning formula - I love it. Those of you who have attended any of the Camera Club Talks or online community lectures I give will have noted that I refer regularly to using Nik Efex - now Nik Collection 7 By DXO. This is particularly noticeable in the following talks:

• Street & Architecture,

• Black & White,

• Colourful side of life

• Anatomy of a shot

• A capital plan

When delivering these talks I am constantly asked about how I process my images and my answer is always a process flow from Lightroom through Photoshop to my good old version of Nik Efex. There are many other elements of the NiK Efex collection that I use across my processing when I need them not just silver Efex the monochrome conversion element.

The good people at DXO have contacted me and suggested that I take a look at Nik Collection 7 By DXO. I pointed out I was more than happy with the results I was getting from my old Nik Efex but would take a look at the latest version of Nik Collection 7 By DXO.

Those of you who subscribe to the Blog or are new to the site will see posts coming up over the next few months outlining how I get on with Nik Collection 7 By DXO. I will post updates on the blog covering the various modules and then I will obviously close it all out with a final round up. I'm now very interested to see where the product has got to offer!

This is the first time I done anything like this on the Blog and I hope you enjoy the journey and find it helpful and interesting. Lets take a look at Nik Collection 7 DXO.

What I can say is:

• I will flag whats good and whats not so good about this piece of software

• I can only compare it to the very old versions of Nik Efex

• I wont be able to say if its worth upgrading from version 6 to 7 as I've never used version 6

• I cant even say if you should purchase a copy as you need to decide that on the value it offers based on what it will add to the quality of your output and your process flow efficiency.

• I will give you the best and most honest real world view that I can and say if I will be using it going forward

#DXO, #Nik