I've been playing around with the demo version. I'm not a regular Nik user--at least not yet--but I had played around with version 8 as standalone apps and decided to sign up for another 30-day demo when version 9 came out, especially since the newly free Affinity supports Nik plugins, and I have always been impressed with these tools.
Personally, I'd say that regular Nik users will probably find that this is a very worthwhile upgrade--especially if you're working on a computer with moderate to good local processing resources (i.e., plenty of RAM and a dedicated GPU). Like all AI-based tools that use local resources rather than cloud processing, the depth masking feature can be a bit buggy/laggy depending on what else your computer is trying to do at the same time, but for my money, DxO's implementation of depth masking is one of the more impressive iterations out there right now. If I was already a Nik user, I would definitely say that it--along with the addition of blend modes--definitely makes the upgrade from version 8 worthwhile.
I think you can sign up to demo it yourself for 30 days and decide if you want to upgrade or not. |
