Today’s Question: I remember the time that you were very happy with Nik Software, and recommend it with pleasure. I want to sign up for a Photoshop Creative Cloud subscription. Info on the web informs me that difficulties will rise using Photoshop CC and the Nik plug-ins. Can you tell us whether we should be concerned that the Nik Collection will stop working with Photoshop?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I think there is most certainly a reason to be concerned that the Nik Collection will no longer function well in the near future, and to begin looking for alternative solutions if you are currently using any of the tools in the Nik Collection.
More Detail: The Nik Collection is a set of software and plug-ins that were originally released by Nik Software, which was acquired by Google in 2012. Originally the suggestion was that there would not be any future updates with new features, there would be updates to ensure that these software tools continued to function with operating system and host application updates.
However, more recently Google has updated the page for the Nik Collection (https://www.google.com/nikcollection/) to indicate that no future updates of any kind will be released. The existing Nik Collection (which is still available as a free download) will only function properly with Mac OS X through version 10.10, Windows through version 8, and Adobe Photoshop through version CC 2015.
I have run into some minor issues with several of the software tools in the Nik Collection, and suspect those problems will only increase with future updates to Photoshop and the operating systems.
I will be providing more details on recommended replacements for the various tools in the Nik Collection. In the short term I know many photographers are particularly interested in options for creating high dynamic range (HDR) images. I have found that Adobe Lightroom’s built-in feature for HDR assembly works very well, and that Aurora HDR 2017 is also an excellent solution. Keep in mind that Aurora HDR 2017 is currently only available for Macintosh users, but Macphun Software has indicated that a Windows version will be coming soon.
I will provide more recommendations in the future related to replacement recommendations for the Nik Collection.