DxO Nik Collection 7 verdict
Summary
You’ll see from my review that the Nik Collection is a mixed bag and that out of the seven different plug-ins I get most use out of three or four of them. But for me, those three or four plug-ins easily justify the cost of the Nik Collection on their own. They don’t just offer tools you won’t find anywhere else, they make them easy to understand and apply with almost infinite variety. What’s more, the presets take your images in directions you may never have thought of and go much, much further than Lightroom presets or Capture One Styles, say. The Nik Collection deserves to be considered one of the key editing tools in digital photography.
Pros
+ Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex – all excellent
+ Powerful new U-point masking options
+ Useful organisational improvements in Color Efex
+ Much better preset organization and categorisation
Cons
– Dfine, Sharpener and perhaps Viveza not so useful IMO
– Some glitches with Analog Efex border overlays
– Non-destructive TIFFs are (unavoidably) big
What is DxO Nik Collection 7?
The Nik Collection is a long-running and highly regarded suite of plug-ins that can be launched from a wide range of photo-editing applications such as Lightroom Classic, Capture One, Photoshop, Affinity Photo and more.
But they’re not just plug-ins. They can also be launched as standalone applications, making them adaptable to just about any kind of editing workflow.
The Nik Collection consists of five creative plug-ins – Analog Efex (retro film effects), Color Efex (wide-ranging editing and effects tool), HDR Efex (HDR merge and effects tools), Silver Efex (legendary black and white tool) and Viveza (advanced color effects).
There are two more ‘utility’ plug-ins. Dfine is a noise reduction plug-in and Presharpener and Output Sharpener are a double-act designed to make your images look as crisp and clean as possible on a variety of output devices.
What’s new in Nik Collection 7?
If you’re an existing Nik Collection user, you might be wondering if there’s enough that’s new in this version to tempt you into upgrading, so let’s take a little run through the new features.
First, there are some big improvements to the U-point masking tools. You can now stretch the regular circular control points into an ellipse and even change the angle of the ellipse. That’s a big new feature right there. There’s a new polygonal selection tool for much more precise selections around objects, and control points now have an eyedropper – just like control lines – so that you can target the tones you want to modify and you’re not stuck with the center point and its positioning. As if that’s not enough, U-points also come with optional luminosity masking.
Nik Color Efex gets some attention too, which I’m very glad about because I’ve long thought this to be the real creative heart of the Nik Collection. Some key adjustments from Nik Viveza have been introduced as filters in the left sidebar, and the HSL tools (new and improved) together with ClearView and Grain tools are now ‘dynamic’ filters in the left sidebar – ‘dynamic’ because the filter order can now be changed in the right sidebar to change the order in which effects are applied.
The third significant upgrade is to the way presets are handled, so that it’s now possible to organize them into categories and search them to find the preset you need. That’s a big bonus for anyone who creates their own presets.
Is that enough to upgrade? You decide – it depends on which version of the Nik Collection you’re currently on and whether you need the new features. They are very compelling, but then you’ve probably adapted to the way your existing version works and these changes really finesse your workflow and masking controls – they don’t add any new creative tools.
There is one more thing. Perspective Efex is gone. That kind of makes sense because it duplicates many of the tools in DxO ViewPoint 4 and you will typically be launching these plug-ins from programs like Lightroom Classic, Capture One and Photoshop, which have perfectly good perspective tools of their own.
Nik 7 Analog Efex
For a time, the Nik Collection was owned and sold by Google, and Analog Efex was added during this time. It’s the only plug-in in the Nik Collection 7 which Google added. It’s a very interesting plug-in indeed, and capable of some remarkable, striking and evocative effects.
It doesn’t attempt to simulate classic films and darkroom techniques in the same way as DxO’s other analog tool, DxO FilmPack, but instead goes all-out for wild, exaggerated and highly inventive retro vibes. You can choose from a very varied selection of ‘cameras’ (presets, to you and I) or build your own using the Camera Kit.
I’ll be honest. Analog Efex is one of my favorite plug-ins in the suite. It has features like double exposures, zoom, rotate and motion blur, light leaks, multi-lens effects and more. It’s all pretty wild, but exciting too, and if I wanted to create a retro, analog look, this is the first place I’d try.
It’s not all good. I wish there was some more variety (and explanation) for the Film Types, and some of the Frame types also mess with the contrast of the image as if the overlay mode hasn’t quite been sorted out correctly. Nevertheless, this is still the plug-in I turn to for atmosphere and evocative retro looks.
Nik 7 Color Efex
Color Efex is just one plug-in amongst seven, but it has so much depth, control and potential that it could be a standalone product all on its own. It has more than 50 filters for creating special effects, applying essential everyday image adjustments and everything in between. You can apply these individually or stack them together for cumulative image treatments that can be saved as presets.
Each filter has controls of its own, often surprisingly deep, and can be masked with DxO’s range of U-Point adjustments. You can add graduated filters, tonal contrast and color contrast controls to landscapes for results quite difficult to replicate quite so successfully in other programs, or you can go wild with old photo effects, solarization and infra-red.
It would take a very, very long time to get to the bottom of what Color Efex can do, and the genius of the original concept is that it’s all geared around the looks that photographers want to achieve, not the dry and dusty world of sliders, histograms and dialogs which so many photo editors have sunk into.
Nik 7 Silver Efex
Silver Efex is well known amongst fans of black and white photography. It has an extraordinary ability to bring depth and richness and drama to black and white, aided by some very good presets in its left sidebar and some powerful tools and controls on the right side of the screen. These use the language of photography rather than the language of Photoshop, and are all the better for that. Silver Efex is perhaps not the most beginner-friendly tool out there, but if you spend some time learning what it can do it will repay all your efforts – and experienced black and white photographers won’t have any trouble at all.
Criticisms? Well, a couple. Silver Efex is very good at adding detail and ‘structure’ to images, but you might sometimes see edge effects around objects if you push the adjustments too far. And some of the grain effects aren’t entirely convincing – it looks as if the grain is ‘overlaid’ on a sharp image instead of eroding edges and detail in the way that real grain would.
But this is nitpicking. If you have any kind of passion for black and white photography you should at least look at Silver Efex. Forget about in-camera film simulations. Silver Efex delivers real subtlety, brutality, lightness and drama – all the things that we love about black and white.
Nik 7 HDR Efex
HDR Efex is interesting. It’s not really been developed over the past few years, but it hardly needs it because it’s already very good. You can use it on single images – the best way is to maximize the tonal range in your host software using a raw file. Alternatively, you can use it to merge multiple exposures, though this involves a slightly different workflow.
Like other HDR tools, HDR Efex uses tonemapping, local contrast adjustments and different HDR ‘methods’ to combine photos into a high dynamic range image. HDR Efex is a typical old-school HDR program – excellent at spectacular/obvious HDR effects, either via the presets or manual controls, but not so good if you’re trying to be subtle. It can produce quite subtle HDR results but, to be honest, if you’re launching it from Lightroom Classic or Capture One, you’re better off using the HDR merge tools in these programs instead, because they are really good at managing a high brightness range ‘invisibly’.
But HDR Efex is still very effective at adding ‘punch’ and drama to flat-looking scenes that need a little lift. You don’t have to ramp everything up to maximum – you can use a subtle touch to give an image a little more bite without making it look unnatural.
Nik 7 Viveza
I find it hard to warm to Viveza. It combines a range of global color adjustments with local adjustments that use all the formidable power of DxO’s latest U-point technology. And yet for all of this, I can’t find anything in it that I wouldn’t sooner do somewhere else, such as in Nik Color Efex or, more to the point, using the tools in host software like Lightroom Classic or Capture One.
By ‘host’ software, I mean the program you’re in when you launch a Nik Collection plug-in. This is one of the issues with the Nik Collection generally – it has to be able to do things that your host software can’t, and I really don’t think Viveza does.
I’m sure it has lots of fans, and I don’t like to disrespect it in case they turn on me but, I have to say, Viveza doesn’t do it for me.
Nik 7 Dfine
We are, actually, on a bit of a slide now. So far I’ve been swooning over (most of) the plug-ins in the Nik Collection, but now I think we’re getting to the older stuff that’s maybe past its use-by date.
Dfine is a pretty powerful noise reduction tool that uses a combination of careful noise ‘profiling’ (automatic or manual) and detailed noise reduction sliders so that you can carefully balance noise reduction against detail loss. It also supports U-point local adjustments so that you can confine your noise reduction to specific areas.
But it’s been overtaken by technological advances. Dfine tries to fix noise when it’s already too late. The latest noise reduction tools – including DxO’s own exceptional DeepPRIME processes – act on raw file data as it’s being demosaiced. Dfine works on images that have already been processed. It’s too late.
In fairness, Dfine can do a good job on noisy old JPEGs, or on already-processed raw files that you can’t be bothered to reprocess. That’s not much of a recommendation, though, and all in all it’s hard to see why Dfine is still here.
Nik 7 Presharpener and Sharpener Output
Is this one plug-in for two? They represent two very different stages in your workflow and reflect some clarity of thinking around sharpening that we are in danger of losing.
Nik Presharpener is a pretty simple tool. Its designed to sharpen up fine detail that’s just a little woolly, hopefully without introducing any edge artefacts or noise. It does this pretty well, though to return to a point made earlier, if you’re launching this plug-in from a host program, wouldn’t you do any sharpening in that program instead – especially if you’re working with raw files?
Sharpener Output is more interesting because it adds sharpening according to the output or display medium you’re going to use. Sharpening is a visual trick – it needs to be done with the right radius settings for your medium so the detail looks sharper but you don’t see any edge halos.
It’s an extremely sound principle that often gets overlooked. My beef with Sharpener Output is that it makes no mention of print sizes unless you specifically configure this in the settings. It seems weird to hide this away when it’s such a fundamental part of sharpening for print.
For those of us who still print images, I think Sharpener Output could be useful, but it’s quite technical to use properly and you can probably achieve similar results with your host software. Beware of printer drivers that add their own sharpening optimisation too, because you don’t want to do this twice.
Nik 7 Photoshop integration
You can launch the Nik plug-ins directly from Photoshop via the regular Filter menu, but there is another, more interesting approach with a dedicated Nik Collection Palette. This is installed alongside the rest of the Nik Collection and is displayed by default in Photoshop – though you can close/disable it.
The Nik Collection Palette offers the same access to the plug-ins but also displays presets for specific plug-ins to speed up the process. There is also a very interesting Meta-Presets section which combines the effects of multiple Nik plug-ins.
However, useful as the Nik Collection Palette is, there’s no way to make your own Meta-Presets or indeed choose which filter presets are visible in the other sections.
What you can do in Photoshop, though, is use the Nik plug-ins as Smart Objects. In effect, this makes your filter adjustments non-destructive so that you can go back later and find the settings you used intact and still editable.
Nik 7 non-destructive TIFFs
Still on the subject of non-destructive editing, it’s worth mentioning that a few versions back DxO introduced a non-destructive TIFF option to its plug-ins. This works independently of Photoshop’s Smart Objects, and with any host program – or even if you use the plug-ins as standalone applications. You are offered this option via a small checkbox at the bottom right of the screen when you open an image.
Essentially, this creates a double-layer TIFF file which contains both the original version, the edited version and the processing steps used to create the edited image, which the plug-in can then re-open and re-adjust.
The downside is that this creates a TIFF file twice the size of a regular TIFF, so that if you are working with 8-bit TIFFs it’s not so bad, but if you use 16-bit TIFFs to get the best quality from strong edits, you will end up with pretty big files. That won’t matter much if you use this feature occasionally, but if you make a habit of it then it could quickly eat into your storage space.
Nik Collection 7 verdict
Nik Collection 7 includes what I consider to be three of the greatest plug-ins of all time – Analog Efex, Color Efex and Silver Efex. I think HDR Efex is very good too if you like that kind of style. I don’t use Viveza very often and I don’t use Dfine or Sharpener at all, largely because I think your host software is going to do those jobs better. Perspective Efex is no longer in the Nik Collection, which is a shame in some ways, but that too duplicated tools you could probably apply more easily in your regular photo editor.
That sounds like only half the Nik Collection is useful, then, right. Perhaps, but I would say that those three/four programs at the top of my list are easily worth the price of the Nik Collection on their own. I may not use Viveza, Dfine and Sharpener very much, but I don’t mind them being there, especially if other people find them useful.
For me, the key strength of the Nik Collection lies it its endless scope, the degree of control it offers over creating and combining effects, and how it shows you what your images can look like with effects you might never have thought of. It’s not just a set of photo editing tools, it’s like a huge and inspiring ‘look book’ for creative photographic effects that goes way beyond Lightroom presets, for example or (whisper it) Luminar presets.
So yes, I like it.
