My favorite plug-in suite is back and supposedly bigger than ever before! DxO claims that Nik Collection 9 is the photo editing software’s “most ambitious” and “biggest ever update” with AI-powered masking, overhauled color grading and new creative filters all headlining the new features.
The big change is the introduction of DxO’s AI-powered Depth Masks. This tool uses local artificial intelligence to analyze the image in question to then generate a bespoke depth map. This not enables users to target adjustments based on distance or depth, but also allows the tweaking of depth masks via various sliders.
Nik Collection 9 also brings DxO’s more traditional AI Masks tool into the suite, enabling the one-click selection of subjects or by drawing a bounding box around a subject, for the AI to then select that subject. And these tools are accessible throughout Nik Collection 9 to be used in conjunction with your favorite plug-in.
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The next big update is an overhaul to Color Efex’s color grading, which interestingly comes just days after Adobe announced a brand-new way to color grade in Adobe Premiere. Nik Collection 9 seeks to simplify grading by introducing a single color wheel via the all-new Color Grading tool.
This allows you to plot points for shadows, midtones and highlights, independently, on the same color wheel. But these points can also be locked for synchronized changes, meaning you can adjust each tonal range as a whole, while maintaining the relationship between each point. The Color Grading tool can also be used with various Blending Modes, and ‘looks’ can be saved as presets.
Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex also grant access to three new creative filters: Halation, Chromatic Shift and Glass Effect. The former is designed to recreate the glowing halation effect present in analog film, allowing users to control the brightness, radius, intensity, hue, saturation and opacity.
Chromatic Shift can be used to create a stylized chromatic aberration effect by misaligning colored layers (adjusting the angle, offset strength and scale) with three different color palettes to choose from. Finally, Glass Effect introduces a range of glass-like distortion effects in the same vein as Nik Collection 8’s Paper Texture feature.
That’s not all. Both Nik Color Efex and Nik Analog Efex now include Blending Modes, providing access to 18 different modes including Darken, Multiply and Color. Nik Collection 9 also includes a range of quality-of-life upgrades.
Nik Collection 9 is available now as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity or as standalone software. The perpetual license is priced at US$179.99 / £149.99 for new users or US$99.99 / £79.99 as an upgrade from Nik Collection 7 or 8 for existing users.
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Check out the Nik Collection 8 review to find out more about DxO's legendary plug-in suite. Perhaps you're more interested in the best photo organizing software or are looking to upgrade your hardware by picking up one of the best MacBooks for photo editing.
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