Nik Collection by DxO

About Nik Collection by DxO

The collection is a group of separate tools that each solve one part of a photograph, and the thing they share is the control point masking system. Rather than painting a mask, a point is dropped on the image and a radius set, and the tool works out which pixels belong to that area by colour and tone rather than by geometry. Adjusting a sky, a face or a single building becomes one click and one slider instead of a selection pass.

The individual tools cover the usual ground. Local contrast and tonal control lift structure and detail without the halos that heavy handed clarity produces. Black and white conversion works with channel filters, film grain structures and toning rather than desaturating. Film emulation reproduces a large library of negative and slide stocks with their grain and colour response. Colour correction handles the usual corrective work with the same masking underneath.

The technical tools sit at each end of the process. Noise reduction works on raw files before other processing and handles high ISO material without turning it to plastic. Output sharpening applies at the end for a specific destination, screen or print, at the size the image will actually be seen, which is the only point sharpening can be judged properly. A perspective and distortion tool straightens converging verticals on architectural frames.

Everything runs as a plugin from a host editor or raw processor and returns the result as a layer or a new file, and each tool also runs standalone for anyone without a host. Presets and recipes save a treatment for reuse, and a history browser inside each tool shows every state of the edit so a comparison is a click rather than an undo sequence.

What is included in this build

• Control point masking selecting an area by colour and tone rather than by drawing
• Local contrast and tonal structure tools without halo artefacts
• Black and white conversion with channel filters, grain structures and toning
• Large film stock emulation library with grain and colour response
• Raw noise reduction that preserves detail on high ISO material
• Output sharpening applied for a specific screen or print destination
• Perspective and distortion correction for architectural frames
• Runs as a plugin from a host or standalone, with presets and a history browser

Changed in version 9.1.0

• Faster rendering across the whole collection on high resolution files
• Additional film stock profiles in the emulation library
• Improved control point behaviour on low contrast areas
• Better integration with current host releases
• Reduced installer size after shared component consolidation

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Install the host photo editor or raw processor first if the plugins will be used from one.
2. Close every host application before starting setup.
3. Disable real-time protection until installation completes.
4. Extract the archive to a folder with a short path and run setup as administrator.
5. Confirm the detected host list before continuing, then launch one host to register the plugins.

System requirements and file details

Frequently asked about this title