The Nik Collection is a powerful suite of plugins available for Lightroom and Photoshop. Previously available for $500 for the entire suite, it was purchased by Google in 2012. The price was then reduced to $150 in 2013, prior to Google making it free to download in 2016.

Tonal contrast is an incredibly powerful tool that I use to improve details in a scene.

However, this awesome fact was made bittersweet when Google announced that it would no longer support updates for the Nik collection, meaning that sooner or later, the chance existed that newer versions of editing software would leave it behind, rendering this great capability potentially useless to photographers.

Social media since lit up with many photographers expressing their concern and disappointment at this fact, as for many digital photographers, it is a critical part of their editing processes. However, on October 25, DxO (a French software company) announced that it had purchased Nik and its collection "...for the benefit of the photographer community..." and that it would remain free. Additionally, DxO intends to release a new version of the Nik collection in 2018.

Nik collection offers seven plugin tools with built in presets that can be adjusted to suit your needs, such as colour contrast, tone, saturation, effects including light and fog, noise reduction, and even a fantastic monochrome editing plugin called Silver Efex Pro 2. Whilst some of the presets can be a bit over the top, I use several to boost the contrast and detail of my images as well as a few other effects as part of my Photoshop workflow. If you are editing in Photoshop and haven't already seen just how powerful these plugins are, head over to DxO and download it for free. All you need to do is register your email address to receive the download links.

You can find it here: https://nikcollection.dxo.com