Before and After with The Nik Collection

As we all know Google is pulling the plug on Google Reader. Nobody was particularly happy with that, nor was I. But thanks to Florinda and others I am now happily using Feedly and working on getting used to it.

When Google announced shutting down Reader I was nervous about their recent acquisition of Nik software. I only use one of their plug-ins for photography right now, but I planned on buying others. Or, all of them really at some point. The same day Google announced the Reader shutdown they also stated they are not going to update Snapseed for PC or Mac. I became doubly nervous then. I figured they were going to shutter all the Nik software stuff and replace it with something worse.

Well, today Google announced they are reducing the price for the entire bundle to $149, which is a great deal. They also said that if you had purchased any of the other plug-ins already you would receive an email telling you how to get the whole collection for free. That pretty much made my day. Now, I want to say this is not any sort of sponsored post. I was just really excited about this. Do I think Google will still keep this alive? I hope, butI don't know. I'm not sure how Topaz or onOne is going to respond to this. It's not too cool for them, that's for sure.

Anyway, since I downloaded it I thought I'd try them all out with a before and after photo. This was just a test and not a great photo, but it shows what the software can do. I really do recommend the new Nik Collection. Though I'm not a fan of the icons they use, but what can you do about that.

Before

After

Now, again, this isn't perfect, but just a quick tweaking I did with Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4 and Dfine 2. Although, the second photo is much closer to what Akaka Falls looked like in real life. So, go, buy, if you are into photography that is. If not, it's cheap enough to buy for a gift for someone you love, or just kind of tolerate.