Good News for Nik Software Users DXO Has Acquired the Popular Collection and Updates Are Coming. We loved Nik Collection, but Google stopped developing it read all on how to keep using the plugins on Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 The voice interfaces Cortana and Alexa will soon be able to activate each other for functions that one does better than the other, Amazon and Microsoft announced. Complete Collection Of Nik Software Suite' title='Complete Collection Of Nik Software Suite' />The 1. Best Free Software for Students Welcome to the internets biggest list of free software for students, here youll find every single program you may need to get through school. No matter what you study as youll see a lot of these programs will be extremely useful for anything school related, theyll save you tons of times with assignments and when using a computer to improve your performance to get a better grade. The best part is as long as you remain a student the entire list is for free Ive compiled this list having in mind all concentrations and areas of studies. Theres a software useful for pretty much every student out there so you can share it with your buddies and bookmark it. Use the table of contents and check out the details of the section you are interested in. Note Taking. 1. One. Last month I saw a ton of questions, FacebookTwitter posts and just about everything else when GoogleNik stopped working for some people. It seems there was a. Couldnt liive without them Since buying the complete collection, Ive found my workflow from Lightroom 5, through PS CS6 always takes me into my Topaz Filters. Note. OS Mac, Windows. The best note taking software used by students. You can attach pictures, videos, audio files. You can use either a pen or a keyboard to get your notes down. Compatible with phone devices too. Download How To Use Video  Website  2. Libre. Office OS Mac, Windows, Linux. A free and open source alternative to Microsoft Office for documents, presentations and spreadsheets. Download How To Use Video  Website. Open Office. OS Mac, Windows, Linux. The original replacement for Microsoft Office. The software has now two different versions. Regardless this is the original and still a useful Office Replacement. Includes A word processor, a spreadsheet, presentation app, drawing app, formula editor and a database management application. Download How To Use Video  Website. Abi. Word. OS Windows, Linux. If you all need is a word processor, Abi. Word is a great replacement to Microsoft Word. Professional Ajax Rapidshare Premium. Download How To Use Video  Website. Reading. 5.  Adobe Reader. OS Mac, Windows, i. OS, Android Not much to say here. If for some reason you dont have it in your computer, its time to download it. This is going to be your default reader application in school. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Read. Cube. OS Mac, Windows, i. OS, Android You can also view PDF files with it but unlike Adobe, you can annotate, organize and interact with your document in many different and useful ways. Ex easily export citations, quickly look up the authors details for other publishing,etc. An excellent tool for going over a document. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Skim. OS Mac. This a Mac PDF Viewer where you can also annotate and have a lot of features such as highlighting, snapshots, crops of your document, exporting your notes to a different file and more. Great for any scientific research paper you may come across. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Win. Djview. OS Windows. There will be a few files, documents that will only come. Adobe or Microsoft Word wont even be able to get a preview. While there many djvu readers out there they can all be troublesome and painstaking to make them work without hiccups or errors. I found this one the more reliable. For Mac, you can use Djvu. Libre. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Writing Papers. 9. Latex. OS Mac, Windows. You ever wondered how come some academic papers you see online or your teacher has handed in look extremely neat and nice despite having complex graphics, writing and equations. They are probably using Latex and you should too. Getting acquianted with it will boost your chances to get extra credit for every class that needs you to hand in reports or research paper. Learn more how to use it from the Latex Project Website. Download How To Use Video  Website. Jabref OS Mac, Windows, Linux. Jabref will let you edit your references in Latex format, which by the way, you should give it a try instead of a old school Microsoft office word docs whenever you have to hand in a paper. They look more neat  specially with numerical data and might get you a higher grade Download. How To Use Video  Website. Lyx. OS Mac, Windows, Linux. Once you know what Latex is and the power it has over your research papers their looks quality, you can browse around many different word editors that includes Latex. Lyx is one of them with the advantage of being more user friendly for those not quite verse with Latex formatting while being capable of outputting the most complex sophisticated  equations or diagrams or styles that your paper may need to have. Think about this app whenever you need to hand your thesis or a final paper. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Darkroom. OS Windows. This is another simple software that will let you just write text without any distractions. This time the background is black. Again I would definitely use this whenever I need to get as much words done as possible or take notes from a class without having any distractions whatsoever. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Scribus. OS Mac, Windows, Linux. Lastly if you are the ultimate writer or need to publish something for a class project in a professional or ready to sell format brochures, posters, newspapers or books. This is as far as I am aware the only free available software for that. It supports pretty much all formats of text and images plus its available in many platforms. A must have if you write a lot. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Citations. 14. Zotero. OS Mac, Windows, Linux, Web. We all know how painful and annoying dealing with citations can be especially after taking days just to finish a paper. This app will organize all the sources you used and give you an easier time when dealing with citation by storing your sources, downloading citations directly from other databases plus you can use the web app to easily collect your sources too. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Mindmaps. 15. Vue. OS Mac, Windows, Linux. If you have a subject or a project to difficult to visualize, understand or grasp this is where a mindmap comes in handy. While there are many web based apps for mindmaps, Tufts University has created a nice program you can install on your desktop for you to create, visualize and share your mind maps. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Mind. Node. OS Mac. For Mac Users, this is a cleaner, more visually appealing, more simple to use mindmap software which has all the features the above options do including the ability to export your work to any device. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Diagrams 1. 7. Visio. OS Windows. Previously only accessible to those students and professionals with a lot of cash. There is a free Version of Visio for you to create diagrams and flowcharts today. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Lucid Chart. OS Web. The best web based alternative to Microsoft Visio especially if you are not using a Windows machine, you can create any type of diagram with it as well. You can get a free account and start using with no limits on usage time. How To Use Video  Website. File Management Computer Tools 2. PDFCreator. OS Windows. As the name suggests, make PDF Files from your word documents. Useful when you want to hand in a paper as neatly as possible. Download. How To Use Video  Website. Pan. Doc. OS Mac, Windows, Linux. A more complete alternative for a document coverter. It will allow you to convert from markdown, re. Structured. Text, textile, HTML, Doc. Book, La. Te. X, Media. Wiki markup, TWiki markup, OPML, Emacs Org Mode, Txt. Tags, Microsoft Word docx, Libre. Office ODT, EPUB, or Haddock markup to pretty much any other file format including PDF files for printing and be ready to hand in. Dx. O Now Owns Nik Software. These past couple weeks have been a roller coaster for photography software. For some companies, the past couple years have been a roller coaster, too  Nik software in particular. In May of 2. 01. 7, Google which had owned Nik software since 2. No new features, bug fixes, or guaranteed support for updated operating systems. That happened just a couple months after making the software completely free. Justifiably, Googles decision to end developments disappointed many photographers who relied on the software, and who happily would have paid for further updates. Today, though, there is some cautiously good news Dx. O, the company behind Dx. O Optics. Pro which  also as of today  is now called Dx. O Photo. Lab, announced that they bought Nik from Google. On top of that, they announced the development of a new version of the Nik Collection planned for mid 2. If you use Nik software as part of your workflow, what does this mean for you The Good News. Heres the most important line in Dx. Os press release Dx. O plans to continue development of the Nik Collection. The current version will remain available for free on Dx. Os dedicated website, while a new version is planned for mid 2. On balance, this seems like a very good development, although its worth having some caution before embracing the news all out. For most photographers, the main thing is that the Nik Collection will continue to exist with future updates, which, before today, very few people expected. Based upon the wording of the press release  a new version for mid 2. Not bad. Personally, I use the Nik Collection to edit some of my trickier landscape photos. It offers an extra set of sliders compared to what youd find in software like Lightroom or Capture One, and the U point technology which lets you apply selective edits is a great tool as well. Although it has some competitors on the market, such as Topaz, its no secret that a lot of photographers use Nik in their workflow. NIKON D8. 00. E 2. ISO 1. 00, 41. 0, f1. Also Less publicized in the photography community is that Dx. O changed the name of their flagship software from Dx. O Optics. Pro to Dx. O Photo. Lab. The big difference U Point technology. Dx. O now allows local adjustments in their software, and its a direct result of their acquisition of Nik. Dx. O sounded practically giddy about this new development in their short FAQ for Dx. O Photo. Lab Today with the integration of local adjustments including a famous technology, and a big announcement to be official very soon, it was time for us to change the name into Dx. O Photo. Lab. The big takeaway If Nik software is crucial or important for your photography, you should be very happy by this development. In some shape or form, it now has a safer future. The Ambiguous News. Theres still a lot of uncertainty so far. Uncertainty isnt always bad  well have to wait and see. But its best to exercise caution at first, because no one knows exactly what Dx. O is planning to do with the company they just acquired. Its possible that theyre planning to keep the standalone Nik Collection available for photographers to enjoy and perhaps fixing some bugs over time, while spending more effort on the new Dx. O Photo. Lab. The U Point technology might just be the beginning, and the new version they advertise could be available only to Dx. O Photo. Lab buyers. Its also possible that, several years down the road, theyll scrap the standalone version of Nik completely after shifting its technologies to Dx. O Photo. Lab. Or, they might do what Google did and stop updating it entirely. That would leave us back to square one where your downloaded version of Nik software still works, but you cant expect any updates or bug fixes over time. On the other hand, they could release a revamped Nik Collection some time next year, but charge a price to buy it standalone. Thats not inherently a bad thing, either. They just bought a popular technology from Google for, presumably, a decent sum. Software development is expensive, and vast improvements to the Nik Collection are likely to deservedly have a price tag attached. But what sort of major update would we see That remains an open question. The layout of Nik Color Efex. If this seems like a lot of speculation, thats because it is. All that Dx. O has said so far about future development is, essentially, that there will be future development. We dont know what direction theyre going, except that theyve already started using U Point technology in their Dx. O Photo. Lab software. I strongly doubt thats the only thing theyll do with this acquisition. Most likely, whatever route they choose will work great for some photographers, and not as well for others. For all I know, theyre working on a fully fledged Lightroom competitor with great organizational and cataloging features, and they want Niks technologies in their new program. That would be extremely interesting. Or, they simply could have acquired it for the same reason Google did  to implement some of Niks proprietary technologies into their own software, and not really prioritize the standalone Nik collection or develop new features. Most likely, the final result will be somewhere in the middle. And thats still good news Even if upgrades to the Nik Collection cost money, its still better than not having that option in the first place. The Nik software you already have on your computer or that you can download for free from Dx. O is likely to keep working for a long time. However, it might be a bit premature to celebrate wholeheartedly, since we really dont yet know what the future of Nik will be. How to Download Nik Software. Just like with Google, Dx. O currently is offering Nik software as a free download. However, I had a few issues with their website earlier. In theory, you can go to the new Dx. ONik website, enter your email address, and receive links to download the software. I tried doing this on multiple computers with several different email addresses, and the links never arrived in my inbox. I did check my spam mail, as well. This is definitely temporary or just an issue for me. My hope is that inputting your email address doesnt auto subscribe you to Dx. Os mailing list. Im sure Ill find out within the next week or so Ill either get a dozen identical newsletters to all my email addresses, or none at all. Well see. I checked the original Google link to download the Nik Collection, and you can still download it there if the Dx. O site isnt working for you. Update The Dx. O link now works for me. A few others have reported issues getting their email to arrive, but it seems like most people are not having a problem. Conclusion. There are still plenty of unknowns here. We dont yet know how Dx. O plans to continue with Niks technology, or even if theyll continue offering a free standalone in the upcoming years. We also dont know the pricing structure for future upgrades, or if you need to be using Dx. O Optics. Pro in order to access any of these new developments. All we know is that there will be an update to the Nik Collection in mid 2. U Point technologies are already in the new Dx. O Photo. Lab software. Despite the uncertainty, theres more good in this announcement than bad. Nik is back in the hands of the photography community, and it seems highly likely that new features will arrive some time next year paid or not. At worse, if you end up disliking whatever direction Dx.