DxO Nik Collection 3 review

Verdict: 5 stars

The Nik Collection is an evergreen plug-in suite that’s as fresh, varied and exciting now as when it was first launched a decade ago. Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro are standout tools even today and the new Perspective Efex plug-in is a major bonus. Better still, DxO has managed to engineer a non-destructive workflow, even with Lightroom Classic CC, which has never been done before.

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Pros

• Optional non-destructive workflow
• New Perspective Efex plug-in
• Huge array of superb effects
• Good value (even though it was free with Google for a while)

Cons

• Multipage TIFF files are large
• Dfine and Sharpener Pro are less useful today

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What is the Nik Collection 3?

The DxO Nik Collection consists of eight different plug-ins which are bundled together as a suite. The eight tools in the Nik Collection are Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, Dfine and a brand new plug-in, Perspective Efex.

Actually, although they’re usually described and used as plug-ins – in other words, launched from a ‘host’ program like Photoshop or Lightroom Classic, they can also be launched as standalone programs, so they can also be used with programs like Capture One, which work with external editors rather than plug-ins.

Analog Efex Pro is the only tool introduced by Google during its ownership of the Nik Collection, but it’s rather exceptional. It doesn’t just simulate old analog films, grain, borders, bokeh, dust and scratches, it also simulates old, cheap cameras, motion blur, double exposures and even multiple tiled images. If it was sold on its own, Analog Efex Pro would be impressive enough, so to get it as just one part of this whole suite is even more remarkable.

Color Efex Pro is a collection of more than 50 individual filters, each with its own adjustments and many with the clever Nik Control Point selective adjustment tools. What’s more you can combine these filters any way you like to create processing ‘Recipes’. Individually these filters are useful; collectively, their scope and potential for creative image effects is huge.

Silver Efex Pro is a celebrated black and white plug in that goes beyond the usual channel mixing, tone adjustments and grain effects to embrace the jargon, techniques and styles of classic darkroom photography.

HDR Efex Pro is an HDR tool that can merge bracketed exposures or tone map single images. Until the arrival of Aurora HDR, this was arguably the most comprehensible and effective HDR software on the market, and it’s still pretty good even now.

Sharpener Pro and Dfine are perhaps less useful these days. It’s likely that whatever host program you use will have better sharpening and noise reduction tools than these old-timers, but they may still prove useful.

Viveza is interesting. It’s limited in a way because it’s based mainly around control point adjustments and does not offer any creative effects beyond that. But even though your host software will have local adjustments of its own, Viveza’s way of working is still very fast, intuitive and, well, different.

And then there’s Perspective Efex, the new tool in DxO Nik Collection 3. This seems familiar. It has some of the DNA of DxO ViewPoint, the perspective correction tool built to work alongside (and within) DxO PhotoLab, and the little-known DxO Perspective Mac application.

Perspective Efex offers automatic and manual perspective correction, plus volumetric distortion correction, where wide-angle lenses elongate objects near the edge of the frame. Most host applications will have perspective correction tools of their own, but not volumetric correction. Perspective Efex also adds tilt-shift lens effects.

If you’re using the Nik Collection from within PhotoLab and you already have DxO ViewPoint, you already have all the tools in Perspective Efex, but if you don’t have ViewPoint, Perspective Efex can fill that gap. It does not currently support DxO’s new non-destructive multipage TIFF workflow, however, so ViewPoint does remain better integrated with PhotoLab.

How does it work?

So far so good. But what’s different about the Nik Collection 3, apart from its new plug-in, is the ability to edit images non-destructively.

Previously, the Nik plug-ins were like any other – you carried out your adjustments and then saved a processed and finished image back to the host application. If you wanted to try some different adjustments, you’d have to start again.

But the Nik Collection 3 brings a new, optional, TIFF multipage file format. It’s like a regular TIFF but saves two versions of the image – the original and the edited version – together with the editing instructions to make the new image. When you reload the TIFF to re-edit it, the plug-in loads the original file and your original processing instructions. You can then change the processing to create a new processed version which is passed back to the host application.

You can opt to work on regular TIFFs or even JPEGs and use regular ‘destructive’ processing, or you can use multipage TIFFs to create re-editable effects. (Be aware that this does not apply to the new Perspective Efex plug in, however.)

This works in Lightroom Classic CC to offer the first ever non-destructive plug-in workflow for Lightroom. It works with DxO PhotoLab as the host application too, or any program which uses external editors and lets you specify the file type.

In Photoshop you get a new version of the Nik Selective tool palette for launching whichever Nik plug-in you want. Here, you need to convert your image to a Smart Object to get non-destructive editing –but you can do this with any filter in Photoshop.

What’s clever about the new Nik Selective panel is that it can now store your favorite presets or the last edit you carried out with any of the plug-ins – and you can apply that effect from within Photoshop, without having to launch the plug-in window.

There is a downside to the TIFF multipage format. In effect, you’re saving a two-layer TIFF file – so a 16-bit image can weigh in at well over 100MB. That’s not too much of a problem if you have plenty of desktop storage, but if you’re using the Nik Collection with Lightroom CC via Photoshop, the files are a bit big for Creative Cloud storage, if only because they take a long time to upload.

This is a key difference with programs like Exposure X, which offers a wide range of analog effect of its own (though not with the same scope as the Nik Collection), but works solely with metadata – it doesn’t have to render and store large multipage TIFF files.

DxO has achieved something remarkable in achieving a non-destructive workflow with the DxO Nik Collection 3. It doesn’t use metadata alone, however, and there is a big storage overhead that goes with it.

Not everyone will need this non-destructive option. You can create presets in the Nik Collection plug-ins that can apply saved settings with a single click and you can then modify them quickly and easily. ‘Destructive’ editing can be the quickest, simplest and most effective approach if you know what you want and don’t need to keep experimenting.

Are the results good?

Apart from the addition of Perspective Efex, the tools in the Nik Collection 3 plug-ins are essentially unchanged. That’s hardly an issue, because they already at the very top of their game. Analog Efex Pro offers the same old-camera effects you’ll find in other programs and then adds whole new ones of its own. Its presets are terrific, and offer a huge range of looks, but the permutations available with the manual tools are practically limitless.

Color Efex Pro is the same but different. It concentrates mostly on more traditional photographic filters. Some are more useful than others, but collectively they offer huge range and scope – particularly since you can use them in combination, each with its own highly controllable selective adjustments.

Silver Efex Pro is not the only black and white plug-in on the market by any means, but somehow the tonal depth of its results, its use of digital versions of classic darkroom techniques, and its effective local adjustment tools just make it stand out from the rest.

Of the rest, HDR Efex Pro is an extremely effective and straightforward HDR tool that’s second only to Aurora HDR and, as part of the DxO Nik Collection, a whole lot cheaper. Viveza is less useful, but still handy for color images that need some selective adjustments.

Sharpener Pro and Dfine haven’t really stood the test of time and might well prove to have limited value for anyone with a RAW workflow, but Perspective Efex brings a whole lot of new features that the Nik Collection hasn’t had before. If you’re using it with a host program it’s likely this program will already have some perspective correction tools, but Perspective Efex also has volumetric distortion correction a nice-looking tilt-shift effect.

In short, not all of the Nik plug-ins are equally useful, but the best ones are so spectacularly good that they easily carry the rest.

Who should get it?

If you have never tried the Nik Collection then you really should. You can download a free 30-day trial to help you make your mind up. If you already have the Nik Collection and it’s working fine for you, then this upgrade only becomes important if you really want the non-destructive workflow and the new Perspective Efex plug-in.

DxO bundled DxO PhotoLab Essential with the Nik Collection 2, which added to the value and perhaps brought more people on board since the Nik Collection then became an end-to-end image organising, RAW processing and creative tool, but that was potentially confusing/irritating for existing PhotoLab owners. DxO Nik Collection 3 does not include PhotoLab, which is probably a wise decision. Superficially it’s a not such good value, but it is now a much simpler proposition.

It’s clear that DxO sees the Nik Collection audience as much larger and wider than PhotoLab’s. With the Nik Collection 3, it’s made this classic plug-in suite even more attractive for Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One users and many more. There are things that even the best non-destructive photo editor can’t do, and for that there’s the Nik Collection.