Round becomes elliptical and Red was cheap
The new Nik Collection breaks with tradition, Nikon has acquired Red out of necessity and the Pulitzer Prizes for press photography are here.
Instead of this Fujinon lens, the Red cameras could soon be fitted with Nikkor lenses.
(Image: Red)
Is it actually still allowed to publish software for image processing that doesn't say "artificial intelligence" in every second line of the press release - whether justified or not? Of course, you can if you have an established brand and are not dependent on the marketing buzzword. After all, the machine learning behind the supposed intelligence is simply not necessary for every program.
It is therefore all the more refreshing that the French DxO Labs have now presented their version 7 of the "Nik Collection" without any AI buzzwords. The new features are listed individually in our detailed report. For long-time users, for example of the previously free version from Google, only the two biggest new features are listed in this column: The U-Points are no longer necessarily round, and the individual modules of the Collection can be accessed directly one below the other.
Elliptical U-Points
The first point is simple, but increases flexibility. Instead of circles, ellipses can now also be marked for editing via the U-Points. For example, a face for color adjustment can be selected with one or two U-Points. Previously, this required many more clicks. Anyone who has only ever used masks and layers should give this a try. The demo version of the Nik Collection is still free.
The second new feature also has to do with saving time, especially if you use the Collection as a plug-in for a host program such as Photoshop. With version 7, it is no longer necessary to switch to the host after color adjustment with Viveza, for example, to call up a special filter for the entire image with Color Efex. The Nik Collection can now transfer the data between the modules directly. This was long overdue, as was the faster opening of images from the host. A look at the Windows Task Manager shows that much of the Collection was previously still single-threaded and hardly benefited from modern CPUs with many cores.
Videos by heise
Annual updates are like a subscription
Apparently, DxO has finally cleaned up the code base thoroughly. Anyone who appreciates the workflow with U-Points and the tastefully predefined filters will probably buy version 7 simply because of the higher speed. Everyone else will have to consider whether another 89 euros is necessary for the update after just one year. It's to DxO's credit that, unlike many providers, it doesn't just offer a subscription model. But 90 euros per year is ultimately nothing more than the pre-paid subscriptions for Photoshop, which cost the same. Of course, only if you really need the latest version of the Nik Collection. With Photoshop, you don't have a choice anyway.
Nikon only paid 85 million US dollars for Red
Nikon probably also had no choice, from a purely business perspective, when the company was sued by Red over a patent in 2022: Buying Red was cheaper on the bottom line than the long legal battle. At least this is the conclusion reached by Petapixel after looking at Nikon's current balance sheets. These show that Nikon acquired Red for the ridiculous price of around 85 million US dollars. However, to really classify this, one would need to know the terms on which Red reached an agreement with other camera manufacturers.
The patent in question for a certain type of raw video recording in a camera still exists and now belongs to Nikon. Other camera manufacturers have concluded agreements with Red, but it is not yet known how these will continue. As described last week, it is certainly no coincidence that Canon of all companies, Nikon's arch-competitor, has publicly rejoiced at the takeover. For better or worse, they will now have to cooperate more closely with Nikon because of the patent.
Pulitzer Prizes for AP and Reuters
Our recommendation for a long read for the weekend is Petapixel's annotated photo series on the Pulitzer Prize for press photos. As with the World Press Photo Award (WPPA), we are not reproducing the images here because they are all about documented human 'warfare'. In the "Feature Photography" category, a team from the Associated Press won for a long-term documentation of migration from Colombia to the USA. And Reuters won, as it did at the WPPA, with images from the war in the Gaza Strip in the "Breaking News" category. The judges particularly appreciated the fact that the agency had documented the first few weeks "at great risk to its own safety".
(nie)
