DxO Nik Collection 8

Image editing plug-ins to broaden your photographic horizons

- IAN EVENDEN

$159.99 From www.dxo.​com

Needs macOS 14 or later (macOS 15 or later, M1 recommended)

DXO’S NIK COLLECTION of image editing plug-ins has been around for a while now, and continues to add new features as well as polish older ones. It’s best used as part of an image processing workflow with another app such as DxO’s own Photolab 8, plus those from Adobe or Serif, though the individual parts can be used as stand-alone apps if you want to.

What you get is a set of eight plug-ins, each of which acts like an editing app in its own right, just with a narrow focus. There’s Analog Efex for making your photos look like they were shot on a vintage film camera; Color Efex for cross-processing effects and darkroom tricks in color photos, while Viveza does something similar but is really all about perfecting the colors in an image; Silver Efex does nothing but change your images to black and white, with tools to adjust contrast and simulate filters; and DFine reduces the digital noise from high ISO. There’s HDR Efex for the creation of HDR images, like the Tone Mapping Persona in Affinity Photo. And there’s Sharpener, which is really two plug-ins and which will crisp up any images you think are looking a bit soft, varying its output depending on the medium you have in mind to display the final image.