Nik Software


Nik Software was a software development company established in 1995 and based in San Diego, California. The company developed multiple image editing plug-ins and tools and Snapseed, a popular image enhancement application for iOS and Android.
In September 2012, Nik Software was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. DxO announced on October 25, 2017 the acquisition of Nik Collection from Google and has since continued to develop it.

History

In 1995 Nik Software was founded by Nils Kokemohr in Hamburg. Nik Software focused on digital photography and graphic design. The Nik Software team developed Nils Efex! and Nils Type Efex!, these were a combination of Photoshop actions and textures. In 1999 Michael J Slater joined Nik Software as CEO of the company. He led the company from a small software developer company to a software research and development company.
Nik Software was, until Google's acquisition, a privately held company owned by investors and Nikon, which in 2010 had a 35% stake in it. Nikon made its investment in 2005. As of 2010, the company had 120 employees — around 40 of whom are located in San Diego where the company is headquartered while the remaining staff are based in Germany.
In September 2012, Nik Software was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount.

Products

Nik Collection

The Nik Collection is a set of image enhancement tools and photographic filter plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture.
The collection comprises the following products:
The collection was originally priced at $500, but after Google acquired Nik, the price was dropped to $150. On March 24, 2016, Google announced that they would make the Nik Collection free. Around May 30, 2017, Google announced that they have no plans to update the Nik Collection or add new features over time. On October 25, 2017, DxO announced the acquisition of the Nik Collection assets from Google.
Snapseed is an image editing application for iOS and Android. Nik Software also sold desktop versions of Snapseed for MacOS and Microsoft Windows which have since been discontinued.

Capture NX

is a stand-alone photo editing programs co-developed by Nik Software and Nikon, released in 2006. A new version of the program, Capture NX 2, was released in 2008.