Nik Software was a software development company established in 1995 and based in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. The company developed multiple image editing plug-ins and tools (for

digital image processing Digital image processing is the use of a digital computer to process digital images through an algorithm. As a subcategory or field of digital signal processing, digital image processing has many advantages over analog image processing. It allow ...

applications, such as

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...

) and

Snapseed Snapseed is a photo-editing application for iOS and Android that enables users to enhance photos and apply digital filters. It was created by Nik Software, and is now owned by Google. History Nik Software originally launched Snapseed on the iPa ...

, a popular image enhancement application for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and Android. In September 2012, Nik Software was acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

for an undisclosed amount. DxO announced on October 25, 2017 the acquisition of Nik Collection from Google and has since continued to develop it.

History

In 1995 Nik Software (originally Nik Multimedia) was founded by Nils Kokemohr in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

. Nik Software focused on

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image i ...

and graphic design. The Nik Software team developed Nils Efex! and Nils Type Efex! which were a

combination In mathematics, a combination is a selection of items from a set that has distinct members, such that the order of selection does not matter (unlike permutations). For example, given three fruits, say an apple, an orange and a pear, there are th ...

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...

actions and textures. In 1999 Michael J Slater joined Nik Software as CEO of the company. He led the company from a small software developer company to becoming a software research and development company. Nik Software was, until Google's acquisition, a

privately held company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...

owned by investors and

Nikon (, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group. Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...

, which in 2010 had a 35% stake. Nikon made its investment in 2005. As of 2010, the company had 120 employees — around 40 of whom were located in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

where the company was headquartered while the remaining staff (primarily engineering) were based in Germany. In September 2012, Nik Software was acquired by

for an undisclosed amount. After acquiring Nik, Google dropped the price of the software from $500 to $150. On March 24, 2016, Google announced that they would make Nik Collection free. Around May 30, 2017, Google announced that they had no plans to update Nik Collection or add new features over time. On October 25, 2017, DxO announced the acquisition of Nik Collection assets from Google. In 2018, DxO released a new version of Nik Collection and has since released a new version every year. In 2020, it introduced an eighth plug-in as part of Nik Collection 3: Nik Perspective Efex.

Products

Nik Collection

Nik Collection is a suite of eight photo editing applications for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

. They are predominantly used as plug-ins for

but can also be used as plug-ins for Adobe Lightroom Classic,

Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

, and

DxO PhotoLab DxO is a French company dedicated to photography. Founded in 2006, it is located in Boulogne-Billancourt. It markets DxO PhotoLab, ViewPoint, and FilmPack image processing software and a connected camera, the DxO ONE. History DxO created DxOMa ...

. They also function as standalone applications. The collection comprises the following products:

Nik Color Efex

A large collection of filters focused on manipulating color, tone, and contrast. It is possible to target edits using local adjustments.

Nik Silver Efex

Black and white conversion and editing, offering control over exposure, contrast, structure, tones, grain. It also includes local adjustments and a number of presets that emulate classic film stocks.

Nik Dfine

Noise reduction, with global and local adjustments

Nik Viveza

Tools for making a broad range of changes to an image, such as exposure, contrast, structure, color, shadow recovery. Changes can be made globally or targeted using local adjustment tools.

Nik Analog Efex

Simulates vintage, film-era cameras, lenses, and film stocks. It includes effects such as light leaks and textures.

Nik HDR Efex

A tool for blending bracketed images together to capture a

high dynamic range High dynamic range (HDR) is a dynamic range higher than usual, synonyms are wide dynamic range, extended dynamic range, expanded dynamic range. The term is often used in discussing the dynamic range of various signals such as images, videos, ...

. It can also tone map individual images.

Nik Sharpener

Image sharpening, either globally or targeted using local adjustment tools. It has a Pre-Sharpener for preparing raw files at the beginning of a workflow, and Output Sharpening designed to prepare images for display.

Nik Perspective Efex

Geometric distortion correction tools to address converging verticals and horizontals through keystoning. It also corrects volume distortion where a subject might appear wider than in reality due to being positioned close to the edge of frame when photographed using a wide-angle lens.

Snapseed

is an image editing application for

and Android. Nik Software also sold desktop versions of Snapseed for

MacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and Microsoft Windows which have since been discontinued.

Capture NX

Capture NX Capture NX is a photo editing computer program developed by Nik Software in partnership with Nikon for macOS and Microsoft Windows. In September 2012, Google acquired Nik Software, but Capture NX has remained a Nikon software and is adverti ...

is a stand-alone photo editing programs co-developed by Nik Software and Nikon, released in 2006. A new version of the program, Capture NX 2, was released in 2008.

References

{{reflist MacOS graphics-related software Windows graphics-related software Photo software 1995 software Google acquisitions 2012 mergers and acquisitions