This morning I had the chance to sit down with the morning crew on the local FOX affiliate, WTNZ, to talk about Google’s latest acquisition, a company called Nik Software. Nik Software is the maker of popular photo editing plugins for packages like Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop, for doing things like black and white conversions. Almost every photographer I know that deals in black and white on a regular basis owns, and regularly uses, Silver Efex Pro 2… totally awesome piece of software. If you follow my photo blog, you may remember recent posts like The Howlin’ Hobbit or this past week’s Cemetery Tree; both were edited using that program.
So why would Google go to the trouble of buying up such a well established photo editing company? Great question. Nik Software is also the creature of the popular iPad / iPhone app SnapSeed, which is largely viewed as a competitor to Facebook’s Instagram. So is Google hoping to bolster it’s photo editing abilities for Google+ and give the platform a much needed shot in the arm? Time will certainly tell; check out the video below for more information (and to see some more of my black and white images!).
–Dan Thompson