Same Picture...Different Editing...FREE Program

Not too long ago I would always hear people talking about a program for photography editing that was mainly for black and white, or so it seemed.  Recently I received an email newsletter about the program called Nik Collection and it said it was a free download.  You say free and I'm there.

First I had to look it up and I found that Google bought NIK in 2012 for their mobile apps.  Nik was selling the programs for around $500.  There are 7 programs in the collection...Nik's Analog Efex Pro, Color EfexPro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveca, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine.  Google was selling it for $149.  This program is awesome in that it works with Aperture, Photoshop and Lightroom, Elements and on either Mac's or PC's.  I downloaded both as I have an older PC laptop and a newer MacBook Pro.  The download was fast on both machines and so simple that I thought this must be a loser of a program.  It works great on either machine and in some ways is not only more simple to use but faster as well.  You may stumble through the first 30 minute to an hour, depending on how well you are with editing software but if this is your first experience with editing the hour is all you will need to be really up to speed.  It launches from any other software as a plug-in and gives you tons of options.  I thought ON 1 10 was good but it kind of puts them to shame in speed and options.

 I have two edits of the same image here.  The black and white was my first attempt at editing a color image conversion with Nik and was done in Silver Efex Pro 2,  the color was done in Color Efex Pro 4.  Both had LR edits first and then Nik and then resized to .jpg.

Click on images to enlarge.