Google announced recently that it is making all seven of its popular and powerful Nik plugins available for free! I haven’t tried them all, but I love their U-Point technology for making local corrections, and I was really impressed by how I could easily produce stunning black and whites with Silver Effects Pro (that I didn’t have the experience to imagine beforehand.)
Rather than list all the plugins here and what they are for, I’ll send you to this Nik plugins page. If your plugins don’t appear in Lightroom after installation, visit this troubleshooting page.
It appears from Google’s statement that they will be focusing on mobile applications going forward – so don’t count on future support for or development of these desktop plugins.
Update: if you’re looking for training on using Nik plugins, Tim Grey has a free video course.
Update: I am not a Nik expert and can’t provide troubleshooting help. Please check the troubleshooting section of the Nik site, or post in one of the Lightroom or Photoshop forums.
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Thanks for posting this. I haven’t tried these before, but will now.
Happy Shooting
Hi Laura,
I have Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CS6 not cloud. Will this plugin work for desktop or is this for mobile use only?
It is for desktop only, Clarisse. It should work with Lightroom 5 and CS6.
This should have been explained in very large bold print at the top of the offer. Look above; it is nowhere to be found. I have LR (and) PS CC, at Adobe’s urging, and I spent well over an hour last night AFTER downloading the NIK package, trying to install them. I could SEE them fine when I located them on my HD, but when I went there in LR, they were all greyed out and, obviously now, unloadable into LR CC. NOT HAPPY.
Frank – Clarisse was asking if they would work with Lightroom 5 and PS CS6, so I said they would. They are also loadable into Lightroom CC. There is a link in the blog post above to troubleshooting steps should they not appear in Lightroom.
Frank, had you been thinking of A Fish Called Wanda, you would have said, “DISAPPOINTED!” ;)
For me it works very well with LR CC 2016 (W10).
can i get a refund for purchasing years ago
No, Bill, just for purchasing in 2016.
You are so good at keeping us up to date!
Thank you!
I run LR 6 on my 64bit Windows 10 PC. Is this going to work. Assuming ‘yes’, how do I use this once downloaded and in LR 6 – am new user.
I assume so. I have updated the blog post with a link to a free video course.
After downloading it and (presumably) installing the thing, when I look at it from the perspective of my “Settings | Apps and Features”, alongside “Nik Collection Google” it reads “Unavailable”? And also “Uninstall”. Make sense to you/anyone?
I’m not a Nik expert, photograffer. I would suggest checking the troubleshooting section of the Nik site.
I have tried downloading Nik several time in the last few days. Each time, the plug-ins show up in Photoshop CC but they do not in Lightroom. Do you have any further information on how to accomplish this?
Yes, Suzanne, there is a link in this article to information on that issue. Beyond this, I won’t be providing support on the plugins.
Do you know whether these have been changed or upgraded since Google acquired them? I never understood why Google would want to own them.
I just read a treat from Scott Kelby in LR Secrets discussing the free Nik plugins. Thanks for the tip on the free video.
Click,click
I downloaded the Nik plug ins for lightroom and Photoshop and when tried to open the jolly things a flash notice (IN VERY SMALL LETTERING) appears so shortly that I have had no time to enable me to read it. After several attempts I read something like 72% or suchlike downloaded. Now two days after I am still unable to downloaded properly and use it.
Cheers and please help
Hi Samuel,
I am not a Nik expert and can’t provide troubleshooting help. Please check the troubleshooting section of the Nik site, or post in one of the Lightroom or Photoshop forums.
I’ve used the Nik collection via LR and am very pleased with many of the tools (especially noise reduction), but I do have a question:
everytime I use NIK via LR I have to export to Nik, use the tool and them import the copy back into LR. Then if I want to use another plug in, say Color Efex I must repeat the process ultimately ending up with multiple copies of the same photo with a huge file number followed by edit-edit-edit etc.
Is there a way to export once into one of the plug-ins and then within NIK itself access the other ones to perform additional refinements before exporting back into LR? (And will it be layered, in the event I wish to modify the adjustments later?
While I have always meant to spend more time with the plugins, Robin, I’m not a Nik user at this point. Perhaps someone else will chime in.