Nik Collection by DxO

Overview

The collection is eight separate plugins rather than one, and the thing that binds them is the control point technology. Instead of drawing a mask, you drop a point on the image, set its radius, and the adjustment applies to pixels near that point that also resemble it in colour and brightness. Adjusting a sky, a face or a single building becomes a matter of placing three points rather than painting a selection.

The individual plugins each cover a distinct job. One handles selective colour and tonal adjustment with the control point system, one is the black and white converter with film stock responses, grain structures and sensitivity filters, one is the film emulation set with hundreds of analogue stock renderings, one handles high dynamic range merging and tone mapping, and the remaining ones cover sharpening, noise reduction, colour and creative effect work.

Sharpening and noise reduction are the technical pair. The sharpener applies capture sharpening for the lens and sensor at import and output sharpening for the final medium, with structure and local contrast control that avoids halos on high contrast edges. Noise reduction runs a machine learning pass that separates luminance and colour noise from detail, and it accepts raw files directly so the reduction happens before demosaicing rather than after.

The collection installs into the common raster editors and raw processors, and every plugin can also run as a standalone application for anyone who does not keep a host installed. Presets are shared across the set, edits return to the host as a new layer where the host supports it, and this build includes all eight rather than a subset, with the full preset libraries installed locally.

Key Features

• Control point technology applying adjustments by proximity and colour similarity instead of drawn masks
• Selective colour and tonal adjustment with stacked control points
• Black and white conversion with film stock responses, grain structures and sensitivity filters
• Analogue film emulation covering hundreds of stock renderings
• High dynamic range merging with tone mapping and ghost removal
• Capture and output sharpening with halo controlled structure and local contrast
• Machine learning noise reduction accepting raw files before demosaicing
• Creative colour, glow, contrast and vignette effect set
• All eight plugins usable inside a host or as standalone applications
• Shared preset libraries installed locally across the whole collection

What Changed in This Build

• Faster processing across the collection on recent hardware
• Improved noise reduction detail retention at very high sensitivity settings
• New preset packs across the film emulation and black and white plugins
• Control point behaviour refined on low contrast transitions

System Requirements

Processor	Intel or AMD 64-bit, 4 cores minimum, 8 recommended
Memory	8 GB minimum, 16 GB recommended
Graphics	GPU with 2 GB VRAM for accelerated processing
Storage	6 GB for install with the full preset libraries
Host application	Optional, every plugin also runs standalone

Release Details

Full title	Nik Collection by DxO
Version string	9.1.0
Publisher	DxO
Category	Software
Licence	Full version, all eight plugins included
Platform	Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
Interface language	Multilingual, 6 interface languages
Archive size	2.14 GB
Mirrors	4 active, all reporting online
Listed	refreshed 1 month ago, checked again 40 minutes ago

Installation Notes

• Apply the plugins to a duplicate layer or smart object where the host supports it, so the result can be reduced afterwards.
• Sharpen last in the chain and noise reduce first, running them the other way around amplifies exactly what you are trying to remove.
• Install the full preset libraries during setup, fetching them later is slower than taking them in one pass.

Before You Start

Read the notes above before running setup. Most of the problems people write in about are covered there, and almost all of them come down to an older version of the same software still being installed, a graphics driver that predates the release, or a security suite quarantining part of the package mid install.

There is no archive password on this or any other entry in the library. If something you downloaded elsewhere claims to come from here and asks for one, it did not come from here. Nothing on this site is behind a survey, a shortener or a countdown either.

If the entry does not match what the page describes, say so on the contact page and include the version string from the release details table. Reports naming a specific version get checked first because the checker can reproduce them straight away.

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