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Google Releases $149 Nik Software Plug-in Bundle for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture
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Futurix
macrumors 6502a
Lately large proportion of Google-related news is about them either:
- shutting some services completely
- shutting services as independent products to integrate them with Google+
- removing compatibility with non-Google services
It is hard to trust the company that does that.
Thanks God they never bought it. Apple takes ages to implement stuff.
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Incredible how people still refuse to understand how google works at this point. This lame personal info argument is not a valid point for more than 10 years.
Partially agree with your points. This is a behavior google is displaying blatantly only recently. Google is known for their upstanding merge policies and practices, moving entire merged teams to keep working and implementing their knowledge in google projects.
Remember writely and how it become google docs, the former writely CEO is a lead on gdocs today.
Really merging companies and expertise rather than shutting them is what google is all about.
photographypro
macrumors regular
Dont fear the price drop!
I really don't feel the price drop of Nik software to $149 means that it's going away. The photographic market has changed drastically in the last five years. I have been a professional photographer for over 30 years. Before the economy went south, the advent of digital cameras flooded the market with photographers. Then the dip in the economy made that even worse. Today's modern cameras make it possible for someone with little photographic knowledge to produce very good quality pictures. I still shoot professionally, but I am now in the business of photographic education.
As a reminder, Apple's Aperture program was originally $499. Version 2 came out at $199. Version 3 is now $79. Yes, this might be going away.
Adobe's Lightroom program was originally $299. Versions two and three were the same price. Version 4 came out at half of this price, $149. Adobe Lightroom is used by over 90% of the professionals that I know and it's not going away anytime soon. Apple has added Lightroom to the Apple App Store for Mac computers. Interesting!
At $500, only serious professionals and rich amateurs were buying Nik's complete collection. I personally used to own the black-and-white and color collections, which sold for $199 each. Now that the price had dropped to $149 for the complete collection, Google could easily sell 5 to 10 times as many copies of this program, so financially they will come out way ahead. The research and development costs have already been paid. There is also competition from onOne software, which now offers their complete collection for $149 to Nik users.
I believe that Google will continue to develop the software. It will be a very good moneymaker for them. And they can market it to a wider audience. My only regret as a serious professional photographer is that now, like digital cameras, every amateur will have access to this software.
On the positive side, I now have the complete collection, and many more potential student clients!
I really don't feel the price drop of Nik software to $149 means that it's going away. The photographic market has changed drastically in the last five years. I have been a professional photographer for over 30 years. Before the economy went south, the advent of digital cameras flooded the market with photographers. Then the dip in the economy made that even worse. Today's modern cameras make it possible for someone with little photographic knowledge to produce very good quality pictures. I still shoot professionally, but I am now in the business of photographic education.
As a reminder, Apple's Aperture program was originally $499. Version 2 came out at $199. Version 3 is now $79. Yes, this might be going away.
Adobe's Lightroom program was originally $299. Versions two and three were the same price. Version 4 came out at half of this price, $149. Adobe Lightroom is used by over 90% of the professionals that I know and it's not going away anytime soon. Apple has added Lightroom to the Apple App Store for Mac computers. Interesting!
At $500, only serious professionals and rich amateurs were buying Nik's complete collection. I personally used to own the black-and-white and color collections, which sold for $199 each. Now that the price had dropped to $149 for the complete collection, Google could easily sell 5 to 10 times as many copies of this program, so financially they will come out way ahead. The research and development costs have already been paid. There is also competition from onOne software, which now offers their complete collection for $149 to Nik users.
I believe that Google will continue to develop the software. It will be a very good moneymaker for them. And they can market it to a wider audience. My only regret as a serious professional photographer is that now, like digital cameras, every amateur will have access to this software.
On the positive side, I now have the complete collection, and many more potential student clients!
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JGRE
macrumors 65816
nwcs
macrumors 68030
onOne's Perfect Photo Suite is the closest competitor. Then maybe Topaz. VSCO looks more like a competitor of Alien Skin's Exposure. Kinda useless for most things.
I can't believe all the negativity around here! (It must be the ability to hide behind your keyboards)
While I'm not a fan of google and probably never will, how is this anything but GOOD news?!? The software price has dropped 70%! This is not abnormal as all pro photo software has gone down in price in recent years.
Who cares if it's not going to be here tomorrow. Use it today.
While I'm not a fan of google and probably never will, how is this anything but GOOD news?!? The software price has dropped 70%! This is not abnormal as all pro photo software has gone down in price in recent years.
Who cares if it's not going to be here tomorrow. Use it today.
Bubba Satori
Suspended
😕
Is this a trick question?
Let me go ahead and take a stab at it anyway.
They want to get into the software selling business to make money.
GoCubsGo
macrumors Nehalem
Google by their own admission is a services company, not a software company.
Their unceremonious annual "spring cleaning" practice, while good for a services-oriented company has a chilling effect for potential users of their software. Maybe it's the seeming lack of committed direction the company seems to have outside of its advertising/search business?
Privacy concerns aside, I can't blame prosumers and professionals who tend to develop complex workflows which depend on the software having long term support, being skeptical of Google's experience and commitment to this particular area.
Their unceremonious annual "spring cleaning" practice, while good for a services-oriented company has a chilling effect for potential users of their software. Maybe it's the seeming lack of committed direction the company seems to have outside of its advertising/search business?
Privacy concerns aside, I can't blame prosumers and professionals who tend to develop complex workflows which depend on the software having long term support, being skeptical of Google's experience and commitment to this particular area.
LOL, this is funny. I hope you don't use Apple or Microsoft or Adobe products either. I hope you don't shop at eBay or Amazon. You'd be in for a rude awakening.
Some of you guys kill me with this anti-Google stuff. Is that fact that you like unicorns and baking cookies that sensitive?
Besides, while I use VSCO, it's only good for global coloring and film simulation effects. Nik is a much better suite.
We can same for Apple. When did Aperture 3 get any updates to put in on par with Lightroom 4? Aperture 3, iWork, and iLife are all abandonware on this point. I've moved on to better supported, cross-platform, non-walled garden applications.
We're talking about Google, not Apple.
We're talking about Google, not Apple.
I don't think anyone will argue differently that Apple's support of professional software users has been mixed, at best. If anything, Aperture has gotten the best treatment of Apple's professional apps. RIP Shake. 🙁
But this is a discussion about Google. About their commitment to a particular piece of software. If you have something to add to the discussion do so by engaging directly with points made by others, adding your own opinions, but not by falling weakly back on using Apple as a red herring or straw man.
Um, no. We are drawing comparison that this is what companies do if they aren't making the money required to support a product. Bringing up Apple has everything to do with Google.
How about you stop playing moderator? It's perfectly logical and appropriate to discuss Apple (on an Apple forum) as it relates to the topic. If you have a problem with it, perhaps you should just ignore those posts?
John.B
macrumors 601
I wouldn't buy this beyond a need for the current supported version. IOW, I wouldn't expect this to be upgraded/maintained in the future, Google assurances notwithstanding. OTOH, if these are the full versions of the previous Nik offerings, that is a very good price. If I needed this for a project today, IMO it would still be worth the money (as a one-shot deal).
Adobe could integrate the bits and pieces of Ps useful for image processing (layers?) into Lr today if they wanted to. That would also be amazing. But they won't, because it makes people have to shell out for Ps or a CS subscription.
Too bad Apple took their foot off the gas by failing to update Aperture...
anewman143
macrumors regular
Frankly, I'm thrilled with this - I bought the Complete package of plug-ins last week (retail $299, academic price $149) which gave me use in both Lightroom and Aperture - I didn't feel that dropping another $200 to get the photoshop plug-ins was within my budget.
Email yesterday showed the price drop and a link to download "upgrade" - and I was absolutely THRILLED to see that the upgrade also installed the Photoshop plug-ins!
So - explain to me again why this is bad? Look - google haters are google haters...no different than anyone who hates anyone else whether they be Microsoft, Google, Apple etc.
For now at least I have use of the entire suite of plug-ins for a price that I was quite comfortable with...and now the Photoshop ones to boot.
Count me satisfied...
Email yesterday showed the price drop and a link to download "upgrade" - and I was absolutely THRILLED to see that the upgrade also installed the Photoshop plug-ins!
So - explain to me again why this is bad? Look - google haters are google haters...no different than anyone who hates anyone else whether they be Microsoft, Google, Apple etc.
For now at least I have use of the entire suite of plug-ins for a price that I was quite comfortable with...and now the Photoshop ones to boot.
Count me satisfied...
And yet, the Nik acquisition last fall is not that different from when Google acquired @Last, the creator of SketchUp. That became a Google product, was continually updated while Google owned it - both the free version and the paid pro version - and the technology was more tightly integrated with Google Earth.
Google then sold SketchUp to Trimble. Everything about the product continues under the new (third) owner. The user experience has been continuous from @Last to Google and now to Trimble.
I expect, or at least hope, that the Nik product line experience will be similar now that this announcement has been made.
r.harris1
macrumors 68020
Completely agreed! My goal is a great image and Nik can definitely be part of the workflow to do that. I can only see this as a good thing. True that google may drop it, but...they haven't yet and now I have more tools at my disposal in more ways. Like you I can now utilize these via layers in photoshop, in addition to aperture and lightroom. Personally, I call that a good thing.
ksgant
macrumors 6502a
Then you should log off the Internet and never come back.
Have any email service with your ISP, or even a private service? If they have any spam control, you do realize they're reading your email looking for spam. that's how it works you know. That's just one aspect of these evil "datamining companies". I suppose you can just set up a private email server at home, but you'll be inundated by spam.
Google has strict policies about what they collect and how they use it. It's all for targeted ads. But hey, I may be wrong. Can you point me to a legit source (meaning a real source and not some fringe website made by some nutcase) that proves that Google sells your personal information to whoever wants it? I want your personal information, how do I get it from Google?
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Why would you want to do that?
RAW only exists to keep the unprocessed data from the camera sensor.
If you want to show/print/manipulate the data it needs to be processed.
Converting the data back to RAW would be lossy guesswork.