What’s New in Nik Collection 9
Nik Collection 9 is positioned as DxO’s most ambitious update yet, and it shows in how much has changed for everyday editing. The suite of eight photo editing plugins still runs standalone or as photo editing plugins inside Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, and Affinity, but the core experience is now driven by smarter local adjustments. The headline feature is AI photo masking: a new AI Depth Mask that analyzes depth within a scene to separate foreground from background, and an AI object selection mask that isolates subjects with a hover or bounding box. Color Efex gets redefined Color Efex color grading with a single, unified color wheel for shadows, midtones, and highlights, plus new blending modes so filters can interact more subtly with the base image. On top of this, three creative filters—Halation, Chromatic Shift, and new texture tools—add filmic glow, print-style misregistration, and characterful overlays for stylized looks.
How AI Masking Works—and Why It Matters
AI photo masking in Nik Collection 9 is designed to feel more like painting with light than wrestling with selections. The AI Depth Mask uses on-device analysis to build a depth map from your photo, then lets you target adjustments by distance—from near foreground to distant background. A diffusion slider softens mask edges, creating natural transitions ideal for subtle dodging and burning or atmospheric haze. The AI object selection mask focuses on subjects: hover over a person, tree, or building, or draw a quick box, and the plugin isolates that object with adjustable feathering. Both tools integrate with Nik’s existing U Point technology, so you can stack control points, refine luminance and chrominance, and view masks as black-and-white overlays with customizable colors. Because processing is local, no images are sent to external servers, giving you responsive feedback and tighter control over what’s happening to your files.
Practical Workflows: Subjects, Landscapes, and Portrait Color
In practice, Nik Collection 9’s AI tools streamline common workflows without locking you into canned looks. For subject–background separation, start in Color Efex or Silver Efex with an AI object selection mask to isolate your main subject, add contrast and midtone detail, then create a depth mask to softly lower background saturation or clarity for separation. Landscape shooters can lean on depth masks to darken skies, warm foreground light, or add localized fog without building multiple manual gradients—diffusion keeps transitions invisible. For portraits, the new Color Efex color grading tool becomes a flexible control hub: plot separate points for shadows, midtones, and highlights on the single color wheel, then nudge shadows cooler while warming highlights, or lock points together for cohesive shifts. Combine these with blending modes to keep skin tones natural while pushing background hues, and save favorite combinations as presets for consistent, repeatable grading across a series.
Faster Edits Without Losing Creative Control
The main advantage of Nik Collection 9’s AI masking is how much it reduces repetitive manual work while still behaving like a pro tool. Instead of drawing intricate selections or stacking layers in a host app, you let the AI do the first 80–90% of the masking, then refine with U Points, diffusion, and luminance/chrominance controls. Because the object and depth masks are fully editable and can be combined, advanced users can build complex, layered looks entirely inside a plugin, using blending modes and filter stacks much like layers in Photoshop. At the same time, the new color grading interface simplifies tonal control into a single, visual wheel, lowering the barrier for hobbyists who might be intimidated by curves and split toning. The workflow shift is less about auto-editing and more about using AI as a fast selection assistant, so you stay in charge of the final look and subtlety of your images.
AI, Natural-Looking Edits, and Who Should Upgrade
As AI seeps deeper into photo editing, one concern is overprocessed, plastic-looking images. Nik Collection 9’s design helps guard against this by encouraging local, nuanced changes rather than one-click transformations. Depth masks with diffusion and blend modes make it easier to keep transitions gentle, while the Color Efex color wheel invites small, deliberate moves in color balance instead of extreme filters. Still, photographers should be mindful of restraint: use halation and chromatic shift as seasoning, not the main course, and always check masked areas at 100% to avoid halos and artifacts. Because all AI runs locally, there’s no cloud dependency, though like all AI workloads it still contributes to computing energy use—something environmentally conscious shooters may want to keep in mind. Enthusiast hobbyists, print-focused photographers who care about fine tonal control, and social media creators needing fast, repeatable looks stand to gain most from upgrading to Nik Collection 9.