Earlier this week, the Nik Collection was updated with the big change being the release of the second version of Analog Efex Pro, now seen as Analog Efex Pro 2.0 Existing Nik customers should receive the update automatically but if you are like me and the updates are random and flaky, you can download the latest release at www.google.com/nikcollection.  If you have a licensed version installed, the update uses the existing license without problem.  It also leaves Analog Efex (V1) intact, although I'm not sure why you would care to do that.

In the new version, Nik has added Control Points (commonly found in other Nik products) and more camera presets.

If you've never used Analog Efex Pro, it applies film looks to your photographs a la Instapuke (that thing someone call Instagram).  More accurately it is more like some of the other many film look plugins.  Analog Efex Pro 2 also adds what they call the "camera kit" that allows you to "assemble" a camera model with your own custom look.

I did my own install and played around a bit and then watched Google's Brian Matiash on The Grid with Scott Kelby.  Mr. Matiash is very excited about the offering and I find him to be a sincere fellow and not a corporate shill.

To my chagrin, I did learn that the trending photo effect is the double exposure, so we can all expect to see thousands of posts of horridly awful double exposures to come.  But, I digress...

i know that making perfectly good photos look fuzzy and fogged and noisy is a really popular thing to do, and if you like this sort of thing, Analog Efex Pro 2 really gives you a ton of control and with the same simple and powerful user interface found in other Nik products.

To each their own.  I found no practical use for the original and cannot imagine why I would want to dig into this offering either given that if I want a filmic look, I will shoot film and get the real thing.  I can screw up my images without the need to use software to make them look crappier.  Your mileage may vary.