When it comes to plugins for photo-editing, especially software independent ones, Snapseed’s Nik Collection was always the gold standard. In 2016 it was bought by Google and made available for free, only to abandon it the year later. The French photography company DxO then swooped in that same year and acquired the software while promising to resume development, which it did in 2018 while making it a paid product again.
This was never a great deal, what with the great many free versions floating around and the fact that in some areas the Nik Collection had fallen by the wayside a little. Now though, DxO have released a substantial upgrade.
Nik Collection 2 adds 42 new “En Vogue” presets to the original set of 156 presets. There are 10 new recipes in Color Efex Pro, 10 new B&W presets in Silver Efex Pro, 12 new HDR presets in HDR Efex Pro, and 10 new tool combos in Analog Efex Pro.
Almost more importantly though, the UI now properly handles HD displays, and is bundled with DxO PhotoLab 2.3 Essential Edition photo editing software. While this is missing a great many features of the their Elite version of Photolab, it makes the whole package very tempting to a casual photo editor.
