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User starts a petition to bring Nik collection back

by 18 Comments

The news that Google abandons Nik Collection affected users all over the world. Over the years, many photographers embraced it as a part of their workflow, and one of such users started a petition to bring the collection back. Sascha Rheker from Germany started the petition on Change.org, in an attempt to make Google go on with developing Nik collection.

Sascha states in the petition:

In 2012, google bought Nik Software,bringing the Nik Collection and the popular photo editing app Snapseed into their portfolio. Snapseed had become one of the most popular photo editing apps in the iTunes App Store. Whereas the Nik Collection was an important tool for photographers, especially for creating black and white photographs from digital files using Nik Silver Efex.

In 2017 google decided to let the Nik Collection die, as they are only interested in the smart phone app snapseed. Photographers who use and depend on it for their work now face a situation, where their ability to continue the work and projects may be destroyed with any new version of OS or applications like Lightroom.

Many people were happy when google dropped the price of the Nik Collection from about $500 to $150 and finally gave it away for free. But now that rather seems to have been a move to ruin any competing software developer.

Today, with no real competitor, photographers depend on the Nik Collection and would have been willing to pay, to be able to keep it. Especially for their important black & white work.

A company like google who claims to contribute to the perservation of mankind’s heritage by scanning millions of books, should although show some responsibility towards the photographic community, as photographs are a part of mankind’s cultural heritage.

Photography is more than an iPhone app!

Personally, I’ve never believed in the power of petitions, but it may be related to the country I live in and the attitude of companies towards the users. Still, companies like Google usually pay more attention to the users’ needs, so maybe there’s a chance of change after all. At the time of writing this, over 2000 users have signed the petition. So, if you believe it could change something and you’d love to bring Nik Collection back, you can sign it here and hope for the best.

[Save the Nik Collection! via DPReview]

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  • I’ll sign it. Or, at least make them sell it to another software developer.

  • Or make it open source…

  • It doesn’t fit in with their business model. They only wanted to cream off the mobile app side of things. The two possibilities above, open source or selling to another developer, are the only alternatives to letting it languish without updates.

    • Or they bought it to bury it and then buy out Adobe and control the market.

    • Hugh Wolfe

      Similar to Ford purchasing Volvo several years ago to reap the benifits of Volvo’s engineering superiority and then sell off the remains to a Chinese consortium.
      And I’d purchased the entire collection from NIK prior to Google, shelling out over $600, then finding out Google had purchased everythihg only to turn around and offer it for $150 followed by free of charge. I don’t even use Lightroom as Apple’s Apperture does everything I need. Perhaps it’s time to better aquaint myself with the Macphun programs I also have.

  • Open source it…

  • Make it open source! So someone can fork it for the future

  • Problem you’ve got its patent technology, can’t imagine them giving that away to anyone else without a huge fee and they currently use it in snapseed.

  • And that’s why you use open source software… (from the start).

  • Fortunately Nik is usable as standalone applications, so in theory, if you have already got the installer, it won’t go anywhere. Hopefully. As long as google have not put a kill-switch into it that is.

    • Not true, a windows or lightroom update could make it unusable.

    • Elvie Orocho – So you keep a working version in another partition.

  • Waste of time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!google has not done anything in years for NIC why would they start now!

  • I doubt that. They closed the department in Lübeck which developed and supported it…

  • Thats cute.

  • Like so many at the time, we complained Google would kill Nik and they claimed they wouldn’t. They did. Wonder what it would cost to buy it for open source or ???

  • CanonMinolta

    Some time ago, I suggested that it be saved.
    It has unique features that no other software provides and beings better editing capabilities to photographers (and we all know that with digital photographers need to edit)
    I suggested that either a company step in or a grass roots effort be started via Kickstarter.
    Let’s go people !

  • Guy Poizat

    Shameful attitude by Google: not really surprising though. Make NikCollection Open Source.

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