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Google Nik collection now available for free

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Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#41

Post by verinus »

wodenokoto wrote: post #36
scintill76 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that ensures that I have access to software ...until they shut off the server that serves you that software, or remove/change features you liked. In the old days, you could save your software somewhere and know you could always use it and it wouldn't change on you.

By that logic, it is perfectly fine that Google stopped developing Picasa, since the executables are still available somewhere

no- you are comparing apple to oranges (use some other figure of speech- I'm no native speaker)

yes, it is perfectly ok, that Google discontinued Picasa- I am still using my Installation

no, as I would have liked some improvements to it...

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#43

Post by kefka »

gfody wrote: post #13
pgodzin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picasa is dead, Google Photos is the primary photo product

Such a travesty. Someday we will look back and see the whole web application trend as a technological plague that wiped out great native desktop applications replacing them with inferior web versions that nobody actually wanted.

The only problem with webapps is they they are fragile and depend on a set of materials. If we had a way, we could make a completely contained webapp, call it a dApp...

Oh wait, we now do: IPFS can do the storage mechanism and contain the whole app as a link and just work. And with that magic, it will never 'link rot' as everything would be self-contained. Yep, that's a solution.

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#44

Post by nek4life »

roddux wrote: post #42

Who else had no idea Google worked on photography software? I'm not surprised, given the breadth of their investments but this is the first I've heard of it.

They bought Nik Software a while back. This probably means they are done with the software collection and do not plan on making any updates to it.

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#45

Post by dave2000 »

piyush_soni wrote: post #34
gfody wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree with you more, Google Photos is garbage compared to Picasa. There's no folders and no tags (for writing a quick description that applies to a bunch of pictures), no manual face tagging (for when the magic fails, or tagging pets, or tagging people that were there but not in the photo, or just tagging things that aren't faces), no people pane (where you can select two or more people to quickly see a…

Manual face tagging is there now, and it definitely looks like they're trying to bring as many (relevant to web) Picasa features as possible to Google Photos. Google Photos is 'partially' superior because of its super-search, which was not there in Picasa. People, place, things or time (and their combinations), it can search them all without any manual tagging required. Picasa Desktop or web couldn't search photos of…

As there seem to be done Photos fans here; I've tried to ensure that all my hundreds of photos are in albums (they've settled on the term album now, right?) but there doesn't seem to be any way to check. I'd like to look at the set of photos not in any album so that I can either move it into an album or delete it. What do I do?

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#47

Post by dcuthbertson »

_ati wrote: post #39
Hopka wrote: post #35

Do you need Photoshop or Lightroom to use these tools or do they work standalone as well? I can't find this info on the website at all.

These can be run standalone also (atleast on windows not sure about mac though)

I don't understand how you can run standalone. I just installed it on Windows 10. The only executable is the uninstaller.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Lightroom (or Photoshop, maybe?) is needed to use the Nik Collection.

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#48

Post by bwang29 »

Oh Crap, now they're probably going to make other individual developer who'e looking for monetizing their apps harder (discloser, I work for Polarr). The only good news for competitor here is that if Google decides to drop further development of it, then the opportunity to emulate and eventually surpass Nik's functionality is huge as well.

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#49

Post by gfody »

piyush_soni wrote: post #34
gfody wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree with you more, Google Photos is garbage compared to Picasa. There's no folders and no tags (for writing a quick description that applies to a bunch of pictures), no manual face tagging (for when the magic fails, or tagging pets, or tagging people that were there but not in the photo, or just tagging things that aren't faces), no people pane (where you can select two or more people to quickly see a…

Manual face tagging is there now, and it definitely looks like they're trying to bring as many (relevant to web) Picasa features as possible to Google Photos. Google Photos is 'partially' superior because of its super-search, which was not there in Picasa. People, place, things or time (and their combinations), it can search them all without any manual tagging required. Picasa Desktop or web couldn't search photos of…

Picasa has a click-and-type description at each folder where you can write something like "Burning Man 2015" which becomes globally searchable (along with your people, place, etc. tags). I suppose an AI could determine that my photos are from Burning Man 2015 by inspecting the Exif tags and doing some Freebase magic but there's a whole semantic chasm between that and "Lorelei's first Burning Man".

Auto enrichment of my tags and descriptions would actually be a nice feature but that assumes some basic usable tags and descriptions first. It seems like the designers are too busy coming up with futuristic magic to think about good old practical usability. Worse they also seem completely out of touch with what's practically achievable so their futuristic magic ends up being useless.

Re: Google Nik collection now available for free

#50

Post by scintill76 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #36
scintill76 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that ensures that I have access to software ...until they shut off the server that serves you that software, or remove/change features you liked. In the old days, you could save your software somewhere and know you could always use it and it wouldn't change on you.

By that logic, it is perfectly fine that Google stopped developing Picasa, since the executables are still available somewhere

I wasn't taking a position on that, but I realize the sub-thread was about Picasa. Yes, it is better if a desktop app without cloud dependencies is abandoned, than a webapp.
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