I guess I was lucky, I was able to download Nikon Capture NX in just a few minutes. I have Windows XP with Microsoft.NET; so, I installed the version without .NET, took just a few minutes. The first time I ran it some additional updates were downloaded (also took just a few minutes).

Pros
* installation was fast and easy
* Control Points are cool
* The straighten tool is cool
* I like being able to see the camera focus point
* I like being able to see and tweak the camera settings (exposure comp, sharpening, tone comp, color mode, saturation, hue adjustment, & white balance).
* I like being able to compare my edited image with the original (side by side)
* It is pretty easy to figure out. I was able to use control points after just a few minutes of browsing through the help file.
* The online help is actually helpful (one of the better online helps that I've seen)

Cons
* The overall user interface will take some getting used to, especially the Palettes. I can't seem to figure out how to move the palettes to where I want them to be so that they don't overlay the image when expanded.
* It seems like it assumes you have your display configured higher than 1024x768. For example, doing a 'fit to screen' puts the image in a window that is too big for the screen (can't see the bottom inch or so of the image)
* I don't like the file browser. I'll have to investigate using Nikon View as my file browser instead of the one built into NX.
* file->Open brings up the standard Windows file open dialog. You can switch it to Thumbnail view (even with NEF files); however, that is not the default view. Also, it does not consistently rotate images in the thumbnail view (some images taken with the camera vertical are rotated, but most are not); although, the images are properly rotated once you open them.
* Some control points (white point, black point, neutral point) affect the entire image while others (color) only affect a selected area of the image. If you add an image wide control point after a selected area control point, the previous control points seem to disappear (although, the adjustments you made remain); so, you can't go back and adjust the settings of the previous control points (although, you can remove the effect of the control point via the edit list).
* Seems sluggish on a PC with 2GHz processor and 2Gig of RAM. Some operations are especially slow. For example, going to the edit list and unchecking a control point maxes out the CPU at 100% for about 30 seconds.
* It's not 100% stable. For example, at one point, the menu items (File, Edit, View, etc.) on the menu bar disappeared; although, I could still click on them if I moved the cursor to where they were supposed to be and the submenu would appear. I had to close the application and reopen it.
* You can change the tone compensation to a "user defined custom curve"; although, it is not obvious how to create a user defined custom curve.
* Evidently, the ability to download custom curves to the camera is not included in Capture NX (presumably, this is part of Nikon Camera Control)

Wishlist
* Being able to see the control point circle while moving the control point.
* Every action that can be done via palettes should also be available via the menu bar.
* I should be able to specify the default view when an image is opened. For example, I should be able to tell it to always show the camera focus point.
* For operations that are going to take a while, a progress bar would be helpful showing % complete.

Jon D.
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Jon Davis
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Some control points and actions have opacity settings in the edit list. Be sure to manipulate those in order to see cumulative effects. If both actions are at 100 percent opacity, then the last one applied is visible.

For a 1.0 release, it isn't bad. I had an exception pop-up only once and it didn't kill the session. There are quirks to getting things turned on and off though. I'm seeing the same oddities that I saw in Capture, like palettes and settings being on even though the menu shows them checked off - it requires cycling the setting in the menu to get things to a visually consistent state. I don't know why people are having slowdowns, but it must be individual configurations - this is working a heck of a lot faster than 4.4 on my AMD64 1.8 GHz with 1GB RAM.

"Toodle-loo from Covey22!"

-Armando
Nikonians Team
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Get out of the car.
Get closer to the subject.
Pick the right mid-tone this time.

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I was able to download the small trial file in a few minutes. Hint to folks who don't have .net framework: download it from Microsoft's much faster servers.

I don't like NX at all. The speed to open a file is about the same as Capture 4. The preview window is better and shows 100% view faster. But the controls are cryptic and overstylized - getting to know where they are and how to work with them will take a while. Basic controls for color, color temp, tone and contrast can't be left open. They disappear when you apply your edits. Only a handful of tools can be invoked via keystroke. And the tools that are provided for direct access are specialty tools like control points and redeye reduction.

The Control Points are lame. I found the sliders were lagging my cursor badly and (at least on my computer) the lack of response means it's faster to type in a value using the alternate control window. I moved the cache file to an empty 500GB drive and gave it no limit, yet application performance didn't improve noticably. Using the sliders has some potential for a nice interface, but not when they're so terribly sluggish. Even worse in my estimation is the "any shape you want as long as it's round" function of contol points. How often do I want to apply a spot effect in a perfectly round shape? Very rarely. If you want to apply the control point effect to the whole image, you have to center the point in the frame since the maximum diameter only covers the image from a center location. And you have zero control over the feathering of the effect. For now, Control Points are cute but stupid.

Spot color painting is lame, at least when you're used to working with real layers. Painted areas aren't movable and can't be manipulated.

Unsharp mask is non-standard. Nikon gives you a percentage range of 0-100. All other tools I've used provide a range of 0-500%. So you'll have to figure out a conversion to use Nikon's tool to get the results you expect.

I ran an NX conversion and scrutinized it against an ACR conversion. There's no quality difference.

At least NX installed without a hitch and it didn't install Nikon's plugin to override Photoshop's ACR operation. I see nothing here worth the cost of admission, although Nikon will probably force me to upgrade since Capture 4 isn't likely to work with my .nef files when Nikon introduces new D200 firmware.

The browser badly needs an option to provide a larger preview for single images. Even at the large thumbnail "light table" setting, the images aren't large enough to pick between similar shots.

Correction:

I just discovered that the brush tool and select tool can be used with control points to shape the effect. That's good. Getting a handle on using these basic tools is a lot less intuitve than it should be.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

Downloaded the Mac version in about 40 minutes. Installed no problem. I did not uninstall Capture 4, but I did compress it and remove the executable just to get it out of the way.

PictureProject's "Open with Capture" doesn't know about this version, but I used the "add program" function and it work fine.

With 10 minutes of playing, seems stable. No apparent issues that I saw.

Responsiveness on my Mac is fine, but then I have a dual 2 GHz G5.

One thing was obvious. Going to take a lot playing around the most of out this program!

--------------------------
Rick Paul
The Photo Professors

Saguaro Shadows Photography
Tucson, Arizona

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More on the brush and Control Point interaction. The brush tool is limited in size to 600 pixels, so you're limited to painting and easily blending your effect over relatively small areas. The area selection tool is freehand only. In needs a linear mode to make straight edge selections.

There needs to be a keboard toggle for showing/hiding the control points so you can paint without the distraction of the floating control. There's no option to hide the area selection outline, unfortunately.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

My initial impression is that it is indeed a step up from 4.4, but I still find it cumbersome to use. I can't easily see the major settings. Click on Exposure Compensation and a small window flies out where I can dhange it, but once that is done, it goes away and all I can see is the check mark in the Edit List. This means that in order to change anything, I have to click twice as much as need be: once to open the window, then again to change it. In NC 4.4 once you expanded something in the settings palette it would stay open. Not here it seems.

And why is it that white, black and neutral control points all use the same symbol -- a small grayish white pinhead? Shoudn't black be black, white white and gray gray (with an oposite colored border so they will show against the background)?

Is there a way to manually adjust the mask for a control point? It sounded like you might be able to, but I don't see it. Clicking on "show selection" will show you the mask, but what next? I mean, control points are cool, but if they are this limited, I'll stick with doing these kind of optimizations in Photoshop.

The GUI is inconsistent. In some places a right-pointing triangle can be clicked on to expand what is underneath. It then changes to a downward-pointing triangle. In other places it causes a fly-out window to open with the settings showing up there. In still other places the identical symbol does nothing. Create a color control point for instance. In the Edit List, the group of all color control points (labled "Color Control Pont" (singular) no matter how many you have under it) has a triangle next to it that expands or collapses the list of control points under it (numbered "color control point 1," "color control point 2" and so on). Click on the identical triangle symbol next to any one of these though and out flies a window with its settings. But above the list of color control points is a check box (round, but it's really a checkbox not a radio button) called "feather" with an identical triangle next to it that does nothing (feather does, but clicking on the triangle does not).

I guess this is going to take some getting used to, but I was hoping for better in terms of usability (and yes, some other raw converters are bad in this department too).

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Lots more new images!! - Weekly Phototips and Articles - RSS Feed

Hi Bob,

You may have found this already, but you can indeed use the paint and select tools on a control point - er - "layer". Draw a freehand selection with the control point selected and the selection will constrain the effect instead of the default round fade. There's a feather setting you can use with the select tool. You can also use the paint tool to selectively apply the control point settings. With the plus sign checked, where you paint the effect is visible. The minus sign turnd the brush into an "eraser". The brush has size, opacity and hardness settings. The maximum size is much too small, especially with high res images. Finally, you can combine the selection and brush tool so that the selection constrains where you paint or erase. But there's no way to save a selection in case you want to recall it for later editing.

I'll take real layers and masks, personally.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

This affects all points within the grammatically incorrect (singluar rather than plural) "Color Control Point" (s) Edit Step. I don't think you can actually change the mask, but rather you are adding a mask on top of their mask.

I approach NX for now much the way I do Photoshop Elements -- as a challenge to figure out how to get it to do what I want it to. Yes, personally I prefer real layers and masks, but I'm always up for a challenge.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Lots more new images!! - Weekly Phototips and Articles - RSS Feed

My ‘background’ – which determines my prejudices – is that I normally use RawShooter Premium, occasionally use Capture 4.4.1, and never use ACR. I then use Photoshop CS2 for cloning, layers, etc. and sometimes use Neat Image for noise reduction.

I did not experience any installation problems. As per the warnings on Nikon’s European site, I removed both Nikon View and Capture 4.4.1 from my system before installing Capture NX. However, given that these warnings apparently do not appear on Nikon’s US site, I am having second thoughts about the removal of Nikon View. NX does not provide the same ease for just browsing through pictures. Nikon’s claim (on its European site) that “Capture NX is an image browser and editor, therefore a separate browser application is not required” is, IMO, misleading. Cynics may well say that they are looking to enhance the sales of the forthcoming Nikon View Pro.

Much more importantly, however, I have seen enough of Capture NX to know that I will not want to reinstall Capture 4.4.1. The power offered by the new U-point technology for making local adjustments in brightness, contrast and saturation (without creating selections or masks) really is extremely impressive. Moreover, though it may take some time to master, it is as easy to grasp the essential principles as those who have had access to the beta versions have been promising us. The fact that these modifications are saved with the NEF files (with no need for huge TIFs) is particularly attractive. So far, I have also been impressed by the noise reduction and sharpening tools (except for Nikon’s idiosynchratic ‘terminology’ with the latter).

Of course, the absence of a cloning tool immediately undermines Nikon’s claim that NX will be the only image processing software that one needs. But one does not need a full-blown Photoshop for cloning. It seems to me that, with the U-point technology in particular, NX may well pose a serious threat to Photoshop. The not infrequent claim that “everything is possible in CS2” misses the point that the complexity of Photoshop is often an impediment to its effective use for simply processing images – something that Adobe itself seems to be acknowledging with the current development of Lightroom.

I have found some minor irritations with NX – for example, unlike Capture 4.4.1, it does not remember the previous quality setting when saving JPEGs (as well as irritations mentioned in earlier posts). As well as occasional problems saving files, I have also experienced various oddities – such as control points mysteriously shifting or even disappearing – but these may be my lack of familiarity with it, rather than bugs. If they are bugs, hopefully they should soon be sorted out.

My expectations about the speed of Capture NX were perhaps modest. In any event, I have been pleasantly surprised, certainly with the speed of the redrawing of images and, to a lesser extent, with the speed with which images are saved. As with Capture 4.4.1, noise reduction and D-lighting (the replacement for Digital DEE) do slow NX down appreciably. However, whereas I have preferred RSP over Capture 4.4.1 in terms both of speed and of the control it offers, the much greater power and flexibility offered by NX will, for me, far outweigh the fact that it is still not fast. Certainly, I do not anticipate using RawShooter Premium for new images. In fact, I am so enthusiastic about NX that I have already been wondering how to redo systematically lots of old images! Just as well I retired recently!

Martin

Gallery

Martin

Wildlife and Travel Photography Books


"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."
David Hume, Scottish philosopher, 'Of the Standard of Taste' (1757).

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How on views how intuitive a S/W package is to use is as different as each person using it. Some people like Macs some like Windows on a PC, and some even perfer the command line on a Unix box. I downloaded it and installed it and within a few minutes had figured out the major components. That's much faster than I could do with PS - in fact I find PS so counter intuitive that I don't use it. I perfer Picture Window Pro for most editing.

The control points are going to come in very handy for doing selective modifications without having to create and manage mask (or PS layers). That's a major advantage. I am sure that is a lot of capability here that will take some time exploring - but that's ture with just about anything.

NX won't be my only image editing program. I'll still use PWP but I will do more front end work on raw files in NX than I did in Capture 4, convert them to 16 bit tiff and finish them off in PWP.

All in all for vesion 1.0.0 - it so far gets two thumbs up!

Truman

Truman
http://www.pbase.com/tprevatt

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I notice that the D100 NEF's increase in size to 11.1 MB from 9.6 MB and from 19MB to 24MB from my D2x. The program also wants 42.5 MB for a cache file on the D100, and 80-90+ MB for the D2x NEFS. So you need some room.

I don't do much PS manipulation, so I find that NX does well by me. It allows me to quickly enhance my NEF's without much grief. I am sure that the control point technology will improve in time. That being said, I am sure people used to the total control of layers and masks will be underwhelmed by NX.

I had no trouble downloading the full NX suit (including MS.net) in about 10 minutes through the LAN here at my school. Install didn't affect my NC 4.4 but the manual did say that NC won't be able to render the changes from NX.

The program is somewhat pokey on my 2.1 GHZ chip with 2 GB RAM, but that seems par for the course with D2x NEF's on this machine. Rendering and saving are especially slow.

That's it for first impressions.

JCA

Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37977699@N00/

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Visit

I found file sizes to increase slightly, too. This is partly because more information is saved in the NX NEF, and one of those things is a much larger JPEG preview.

For best performance, I've found that things speed up once I do an initial save of the file. Then the cache seems to work better.

In my opinion, this product is pretty decent for a 1.0 release, and I wouldn't categorize it as "lame, stupid" or anything else quite so derrogatory. I have used other programs that I would refer to that way, but prefer not to on these forums.



Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

Listen to The Image Doctors

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

I agree with a comment the Image Doctors made about NX: This software far exceeds my expectations for software written by a photographic company.

--------------------------
Rick Paul
The Photo Professors

Saguaro Shadows Photography
Tucson, Arizona

My Nikonians Gallery

My Nikonians Blog

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

I've been playing some more with the Control Points, specifically trying to salvage worst-case photos (i.e., strongly top-lit scenes shot during mid-day, highlights blown out, etc) that Digital DEE just simply cannot recover. One of the best steps to learn is to use the Opacity and Blending options. This really helps in making your Control Point changes more natural looking, particularly if you've used them in place of CS2-type layer operations to bring shadows out or to burn in highlights.

"Toodle-loo from Covey22!"

-Armando
Nikonians Team
Nikonians News - Fresh Everyday!

The Covey Blog!

My Plan:

Get out of the car.
Get closer to the subject.
Pick the right mid-tone this time.

See My Nikonians Gallery

Small detail:
In my camera (D2x) the comment reads (e.g.): ©2005 Hans van Garderen
In NX it shows Image comment in Camera settings: LL@2005 Hans van Garderen
Strange, isn't it?

Hans

Happy with my new D800!
My Gallery
My webpage: Photoklix

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Capture NX is not up to ACR speeds but it is decent. I am running on a 3-4 year old 1GHZ 1GB Apple PowerBook so to expect any kind of instant anything is like a joke. Fear not this fall I am to get a Quad G5 (a huge upgrade). As others I do not like the built in browser at all. I always have used Adobe Bridge on my Mac and will continue to for ACR and Capture NX. I will stick with Photoshop’s channel mixer for B&W conversion. Even Apple Aperture got the channel mixer right for B&W conversion! Another complaint is that when one zooms into 100% only the portion of the image in view loads. So when you attempt to pan around with the hand tool you everything has to load that comes into view. This may not be an issue with faster machines. I would switch from ACR to Capture NX if Capture NX was as fast. For like landscape and nature photography I can see using Capture NX but for sports or wedding photography it is not quick enough. All in all I am seeing a lot of colored beach ball (equivalent to windows hourglass) that I am not used to seeing.

Lukas

Lukas

Lemme chime in.....I am using a Dual 2ghz G5 Mac...no install probs at all. The browser is GREAT....I used to use View to browse (SLOW) especially if you had 600 NEF's from a shoot, it would take like 10 mintes to build thumbnails....Now I can instantly see them...very fast. Then the conversion quality is great, always a plus for Nikon Capture and they took a step forward, and now what makes it amazing for me is the B&W conversion with colored fiter control....I can set the filter color and strength of the filter....I did a few images in PS, and they were good so I thought...I did the same images in NX and WOW...the contrast, the richness and deep blacks in the image were VERY impressive. Now I truly think I have an equivelent to Pan F with a red filter. I didnt go into the U Point technology or anything like that as I didnt have time....but was already going through some images with Aperture and decided to look at them with NX....It'll take a sec to get comfortable with the layout, but the sharpness, clarity and detail in my NEFS combined with the flexibility of the software makes this a keeper....Awesome for a version 1 product.

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Ok guys, here's my verdict: I am very dissappointed with NX (running on Mac OS X).

The tools and image algorithms are great as always, the control point technology also seems to work very well but imho the usability of the GUI is even worse than with Capture 4.

It doesn't look as old-fashioned as the old interface but that's it. No improvement from my point of view as tools are difficult to find in the edit list, I cannot select which tools to display, the setup of the GUI is optimized for single monitors and can not be adjusted easily, some very important palettes can't be resized (come on, the histogram and bird's eye view are just tiny!). Also I haven't been able to make image adjustments in the compare view mode, everytime I try to adjust something it switches over to single image view mode. This is far away from a professional GUI.

In order to understand my remarks let me add how my setup was with Capture 4: Dual Monitor Layout, one for the image, one for the palettes. I only enabled paletes which I actually used but all of these were visible at the same time. Histogram palette, LCH palette and other important ones were also increased in size for better control of image adjustments.

Capture has also been criticized for its lack of usability (and lack of speed). Obviously a major redesign should have improved things, alas I do not see many improvements.

Capture NX, like Capture 4, only seems to be a collection of tools. IMHO in a time where tools like RSP, C1, Lightroom or Aperture provide workflow orientated streamlined GUIs we can expect more than Nikon provides us with.

Bye,

Carsten

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Agreed...Aperture or Lightroom are light years ahead Capture NX and will replace Capture 4 for me...

Hope you haven't made edits to NEFs in Capture 4 and expect them to be retained in any app other than Capture 4 or NX

That's the big bonus of any of the Capture series for me. It's the only tool that will correctly read in-camera settings and edits in NEFs beyond just the raw. Any other app just presents you with the raw data regardless of what settings you used in camera, and so you have to start from scratch every time. Any issues with useability are countered by the fact it's less hassle to process NEFs than most other apps.

In-camera White balance and exposure are honored by all raw converters.

It's also worth noting that Capture is also the only raw converter that writes its settings back to the original raw file, something that can break them as far as being able to be read by other programs. Try editing a raw file in NX, saving your updates, then opening it in ACR. It won't. Capture permanantly alters your oringal raw files.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Lots more new images!! - Weekly Phototips and Articles - RSS Feed

>It's also worth noting that Capture is also the only raw
>converter that writes its settings back to the original raw
>file, something that can break them as far as being able to
>be read by other programs. Try editing a raw file in NX,
>saving your updates, then opening it in ACR. It won't.
>Capture permanantly alters your oringal raw files.

Umm, Bob - you keep repeating this claim, and until now, it's been wrong: PS will honour Capture edits as long as you use the Nikon PS plugin.

Now your accusation is correct, and I agree that until Nikon release a new PS plugin it will be a real problem. A lot of folks like to do their basic RAW conversion and adjustments in Capture, and finish off in PS. As of now that workflow is down the pan, and I hope Nikon are going to fix it pretty soon.

What I LIKE about Capture is the very thing you criticise - that editing information is saved along with the file, rather than in a separate database the way Aperture works. That, and the RAW conversion quality, will keep me using Capture, even though pretty much every other aspect of the program - 4 or NX - sucks.

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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I didn't say PS, I said ACR. You are bypassing ACR completely by using the Nikon PS plugin. If you use the Nikon plugin as your raw converter, you aren't even trying to get ACR to use your Capture edits. If you did try, it won't.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Lots more new images!! - Weekly Phototips and Articles - RSS Feed

>I didn't say PS, I said ACR. You are bypassing ACR
>completely by using the Nikon PS plugin. If you use the
>Nikon plugin as your raw converter, you aren't even trying
>to get ACR to use your Capture edits. If you did try, it
>won't.

My mistake - I misread your post. Apologies.

However - it begs the question of why you would want to open a file in ACR if you'd already done work on it in Capture?

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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The usual answer is that you got Capture to begin with, tried it for a while and then decided you wanted to try something else. To your horror, all the images you spent time on in Capture have now been altered so they won't even open in some other programs. If you start with Capture, you are... to coin a phrase, "captured."

In my opinion, Capture is a good editor, but if you use it, you'd better back up your originals in case you need them later.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Lots more new images!! - Weekly Phototips and Articles - RSS Feed

>The usual answer is that you got Capture to begin with,
>tried it for a while and then decided you wanted to try
>something else. To your horror, all the images you spent
>time on in Capture have now been altered so they won't even
>open in some other programs. If you start with Capture, you
>are... to coin a phrase, "captured."
>
>In my opinion, Capture is a good editor, but if you use it,
>you'd better back up your originals in case you need them
>later.

Well, I always back up my originals, but I don't envisage needing those back-ups for the reasons you mention.

IMO Capture is a good RAW converter, and a pretty basic editor. I can't see anyone spending ages working on their images in Capture the way they might in PS, because it just doesn't have the tools for that, even in NX.

Anyway - diff'rent strokes. As long as people are aware of the implications of their choices, people can make up their own minds.

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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There's the rub. In previous versions of Capture I've never had it change a .nef file in a way that made it incompatible with other raw converters. I gather that NX can now achieve this offensive behavior and ruin file compatibility so files are NX-exclusing. That's not something Nikon has mentioned and any awareness will have to spread user-to-user.

In fact, Nikon pushes NX as a "non-destructive" editor. If you want to be captive to Capture, I suppose that's true. But to me such a move is both lame and stupid.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

This is incorrect.

As posted elsewhere, we haven't been able to replicate this issue...

ACR still reads my NEFs, even when I use Capture NX to modify them.
Nikon Capture 4 reads all the changes to the "Base Adjustments"
Capture One reads NX-modified NEFs
Bibble Pro reads my NX-modified NEFs
DXO has a known issue whereby it won't allow the lens tools on files that have been opened in other applications-- this happens even if you save a NEF in Capture 4.4.

To my knowledge, the difference is that if you make WB changes in NC4 or NX, the new WB is not read by the other converters (they read the "as shot" settings only).

Every RAW converter I've tried allows me to open an NX-modified NEF...obviously the NX-added features are not read (just as the in-camera settings aren't read).

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

Listen to The Image Doctors

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

Thus far, I have only been able to cause this once. The cause remains unknown.

Personally, I set all my NEF files to read-only though since I don't want to risk even accidentally modifying them.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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Sure, backups are always important anyway, but the modified NEF can be restored to it's original out of the camera settings easy enough. The edits don't change the original data, they are just added to the NEF file as modifications. In theory any application that doesn't understand those mods can just read the original data, as they should do. If they can't do that they're poor applications.

Other raw apps basically do the same thing, just they save the edits in a side file instead of appending them to the same file. The problem I have with that is it means two files (or more) to deal with per image. They all tie you into those apps too, so you can't edit in ACR and then see those edits in Capture or another app just the same as the other way round.

A universal format would be great but getting camera manufacturers to use it is a challenge.

Have you tested this? Previous versions of Capture even with saved changes didn't render a .nef file unreadble by other converters (at least I never had a problem). If NX botches file compatibility, you should confirm by testing that restoring the original settings actually restores file compatibility.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

I've no idea if it does affect other apps, I'm just replying to bobj's claim that you need to back up the original nefs because editing them renders them useless for any other app. I'm countering that by saying any decent app should obey the original nef data. Photoshop and ACR are pretty decent apps by all accounts

To clarify, this happened *ONE TIME* only. I have not been able to repeat it. It seems like a good general practice though to either keep backups just in case or set your originals to read only.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
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I tried it, and ACR is fine, just fine. Didn't matter if it was saved in NX or otherwise.

Windows bug?

-Jason

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

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Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
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Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

Interesting. At this point, I have been unable to duplicate the problem so I can't say. I'll report back if I can make it happen again.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
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I think you are missing a few points....Here is what I do...I have shoots with LOTS of images....between 600-2000 shots a shoot....When I transfer all the files and want to start to go through them, I have yet to find a fast program to mark keepers and also perform basic levels, color saturation, and minor white balance if needed. I don't like ACR because it took too long to get the results I liked. APerture was SLOOOOW until the new version, but still not happy with color fidelity, but its very close. Capture had amazing results and easy to get, BUT its browser was SLOOOW and so I had to use View to mark and select them and for 1000 or so images View would take liek 20 minutes to show thumbnails. NX is the best of all worlds for me. I get the best NEF conversions, it is better than ACR, Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One for me. The browser in NX is MUCH faster than View and allows me to go through them pretty quickly. Oh and if you do batch conversions, you can still use the program for everything else. Pretty cool...B&W conversion is FAR better than any program I have ever used, Aperture was good, but this is much better and the results are far superior. Its much richer deeper blacks and tonality was very nice. I am using a dual G5 mac and will be upgrading to the new Mac Pro that replaces it this fall...so hopefully Intel support will be coming soon. The speed can be a little faster, but when I had to wait 10-20 minutes to get thumbnails to look at this is wonderful. The user interface is not that bad, I read no manuals and I figured out how to use it for my conversions...the U point stuff is all gravy for me...bottom line is how fast can i get the best results....all images go to photoshop for final editing, so a good RAW converter is my first step, and the faster and easier it is for me to get the BEST RAW conversion the better...NX works for me...

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

>...all images go to photoshop for final
>editing, so a good RAW converter is my first step, and the
>faster and easier it is for me to get the BEST RAW
>conversion the better...NX works for me...

Well, as Bob points out above, unless you make an intermediate save as TIFF, all your work is lost when you go to PS, so it doesn't work THAT well

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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I'm a little confused by what you're saying here.

Take into consideration the following:

1) NEFs (or any RAW file for that matter) must first be "processed". After all, a NEF is just camera sensor data, not a particular image format.

2) Only Nikon Capture reads ALL the information tags stored in the NEF (which tells the software HOW to process the file). Other RAW converters read the image data and the white balance tag-- that's about it.

3) If you edit your photo in a RAW converter, changes are stored in one of two ways: sidecar files (ACR, Bibble, etc), or changes to the embedded NEF tags (Capture, Capture NX).

So of course it follows that if you want to edit your RAW file in Photoshop or any other image-editing program, you must first "process" the file into a readable format, such as TIFF, JPEG, or PSD. If I make changes to the NEF in Capture, or Bibble, or DXO, those changes are stored in a manner that is NOT READ by ACR, period. I have to physically save the file in a Photoshop compatible bitmap format.

So this is not really a Nikon Capture specific issue, IMO. This is a simple property of working in RAW.

With Capture NX, I have found that I don't ALWAYS need to go to Photoshop as a final step. For example, I can print and soft-proof in NX where I couldn't in Capture 4.

If I need to use Photoshop, I'll either use the "Open With..." command in NX, or I'll save the file as a TIFF and then open that in Photoshop. Since not every image needs to go to Photoshop right away, I gain space on my hard disk by keeping things saved as NEFs instead of TIFF or PSD files.

-Jason

Jason P. Odell
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Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

>I'm a little confused by what you're saying here.

I have that effect on people

>So of course it follows that if you want to edit your RAW
>file in Photoshop or any other image-editing program, you
>must first "process" the file into a readable format, such
>as TIFF, JPEG, or PSD. If I make changes to the NEF in
>Capture, or Bibble, or DXO, those changes are stored in a
>manner that is NOT READ by ACR, period. I have to
>physically save the file in a Photoshop compatible
>bitmap format.

My point is that using NC4 you could process the RAW file and make other edits, and then open the file in PS using the Nikon plug-in, not ACR, and the NC4 edits would be honoured. If you open in ACR (disable the Nikon plug-in) they aren't, as you said.

It is also my understanding (though I haven't checked) that NX edits are not honoured by ACR (no change) OR THE NIKON PS PLUGIN.

Therefore, in the context of the OP, who said he ALWAYS goes to PS, there is not much to be done in NX, unless he wants to transfer his work by saving an intermediate TIFF file (which I don't, personally, like doing). He no longer has the option of doing some work in NC and then directly opening that work in PS.

By the way, on the subject of disk space, I notice that my D70 RAW files grow from about 6MB to around 9MB when saved out of NX.

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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You can send the file directly to Photoshop using the "Open With" command from the File menu. Just set Photoshop as the Open With application in preferences.

I agree that the Nikon plug-in will need to be updated for this kind of editing workflow you describe.
Edited to add-- the NEF plug in still works-- it just doesn't read the NX edits. It will read changes in the "Base Adjustments" module.

But here's the thing-- it doesn't matter what converter you use to get to a Photoshop-readable file, if you edit in Photoshop you still need to eventually save that file as a PSD or TIFF, or whatever. Those files are bitmap files, and they are big. The NEF remains the negative and is basically untouched by ACR or anything else-- think of it as a read-only file format that is modifiable in Capture 4 or later. ACR reads the NEF, converts it to a bitmap (TIFF/PSD) and then Photoshop opens that intermediate file. I suppose the only difference is that if you use ACR, you theoretically can discard the converted file without ever saving it, but that's it.

Not everyone will have the same workflow preferences.

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

Listen to The Image Doctors

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

>
>Well, as Bob points out above, unless you make an
>intermediate save as TIFF, all your work is lost when you go
>to PS, so it doesn't work THAT well

NOPE...Save NEF file, OPEN WITH command...Opens a 16 bit TIFF in Photoshop IDENTICAL to the RAW file in NX....no need for any other program to read my RAW file....I am done with it....and it gets archived, now all my final edits simple cropping and image stamping, or serious retouching gets done in CS2....then saved to a PSD or TIFF and printed from there eventually to my Epson 4800....or reduced and saved as a jpg for web presentation. I never understood why you want ACR or any other program to read the NEF file with edits from Capture, just use capture to send it to CS2.

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

This is just an easier way to create the TIFF that jeremyrh is talking about.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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>This is just an easier way to create the TIFF that jeremyrh
>is talking about.

No thats completely different.....he said...

"He no longer has the option of doing some work in NC and then directly opening that work in PS."

Which is not correct, its DESIGNED to do exactly that. Do your NEF conversion in Capture, with your minor adjustments, then directly opening that image in Photoshop.

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

>
>>
>>Well, as Bob points out above, unless you make an
>>intermediate save as TIFF, all your work is lost when you go
>>to PS, so it doesn't work THAT well
>
>NOPE...Save NEF file, OPEN WITH command...Opens a 16 bit
>TIFF in Photoshop IDENTICAL to the RAW file in NX..

Well, that's not what Dr J reports above.

I'd like to find out for myself, but NX crashes whenever I try to use "Open With...", so I can't.

Edit - I finally managed to use "Open with" and I see that you are right and I was wrong (that happens ... )A tif is opened directly in PS, which I guess you can then edit and save as a new tif or a psd or whatever.

I'm pretty much on the verge of binning Capture - 4.4, NX and all - and converting to an Adobe-only workflow with DNG

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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>
>
>NOPE...Save NEF file, OPEN WITH command...Opens a 16 bit
>TIFF in Photoshop IDENTICAL to the RAW file in NX....no need
>for any other program to read my RAW file....

And for whatever reason, Nikon/NIK has decided to deviate from my carefully chosen filename and arbitrarily named the file TransferredImage.tif and saved it in my temp directory when opening files in Photoshop Elements.

NC 4.4 never did that.

This is definitely a major issue for me. It adds several steps to my work flow that I really don't need.

I was also hoping for an open COM object so that NX could be used in conjunction with my favorite DAM tool iMatch, but that was just too much to ask.

We shall see. It looks promising, but for me it just doesn't add enough value to deviate from what I'm currently doing.


Later

Chris

Yes ito dpes deviate from the previous naming....It was absolutely crazy to assign that random number...Impossible for me to trace an edited image back to its original NEF, and keeping the name the same is tough...I have rolled the numbers over a few times so I have at least 3 or 4 file names that are exactly the same, but in different folders....which then makes it an issue to keep the original NEF filename.....hmmm.....what to do....

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As a software designer, IMO the interface is a big let down as it is clumsy and has some serious useability problems like windows getting stuck behind other windows etc. I am also finding that it is in many cases slower than capture 4.4.

I think I will wait a while before upgrading.

Robert Miller
Panascape Photography
Cape Town, South Africa

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I have to agree with you...

I was really anticipating Nikon creating a new product that would address their Capture 4.4 GUI workflow and memory management issues. And if NX did that and that alone, it would be worth the upgrade to me, since Capture 4.4 has always produced better raw conversions than the other tools I have used. But I am frankly disappointed with NX, here's why:

- It is definitely SLOWER, in cases much slower than 4.4 (all these observations are on the same system I used with 4.4)
- when closing 4.4 and being promted whether to save edits or not, clicking NO would close Capture immediately. NX decides to wait around and takes over a minute to close. NX= No Xcuse
- the file browser is more primitive than most other tools. Who cares that I can rate a file a 1,2, or 3 when I cant see a large preview like I could with 4.4 in a filmstrip style?
- The gui is basically harder to follow than 4.4's, with having to click twice as many clicks to make adjustments and then not being able to see a family of adjustment sliders together.
- Nikon still does not show the WB value on the GUI. I know that its using auto but it would be nice to see what the value is.
- NX, in my opinion, has not addressed the basic problems in capture 4.4. Its still clumsy, slow, and has a non-intuitive GUI

Best Regards,
Rob

http://www.robbohningphotography.com
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. -- Psalm 19:1

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

As a developer myself I would say the UI is different is all. It's not clumsy, at least no more than Capture 4 was. It's borrowing UI design from Mac apps and the Photoshop approach which is a little unfamiliar to Windows users.

There are some bugs sure. This is a first release of a new product essentially, but I've not found any that are annoying enough to be a problem.

As for the speed, all I can say is NX is *much* faster than Capture 4. It's odd that people are finding it slow. Loading time of an image is a little faster, but adjustments are a huge improvement. Also the browser is a vast improvement over the hopelessly useless built in multi-image viewer Capture 4 had. I don't really care about film strip stuff, I just want a thumbnail preview of my images that are generated fast and I can click on to go edit the photo. The only thing lacking is the ability to batch edit on a selection of photos (which Nikon View could do).

For me there is a massive incentive to buy NX and that's the fact it does colour profile conversions properly now. I can at last do batch conversions to sRGB JPEG for web use and my JPEGs look like the NEF did in NX. No more need to go via Photoshop!

That's worth the money alone. It's a simple thing but it's what annoyed me the most with Capture, but other raw converters were useless to me as they don't read NEFs properly, only Capture does.

While it does to color management properly at last, it seems you have a limited number of profiles to choose from in Adjust >> Color Profile. The manual claims it lists everthing on your system, but doesn't come close at leas in my case. Anyone else?

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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I get a pretty huge list of color profiles when I bring up that function. It appears to be everything on my computer. That's the same behavior I saw in the beta versions, too.

Rick Walker

My photos:
GeoVista Photography

Download from our library of Image Doctor podcasts here

Huh. This is all I get.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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Attachment #1, (jpg file)

Bob,

Most of my profiles show up but the two custom profiles for my Epson do not.

JJ

Ok, they are both there now. The profiles were always in the correct folder and I have been soft proofing in PS before trying NX. I right clicked on the profiles and "installed profile" even tho they were already installed in the correct folder. Now they both show up.
very strange!

JJ

Yes, my custom profiles are there too, forgot to mention.

Ken Bird
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK

Ken Bird
Shropshire, UK

I get everything on my computer (Mac) - dozens!

Ken Bird
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK

Ken Bird
Shropshire, UK

Hmmm... I've installed NX on two machines now, and the second one does show a handful more than the first, but still only a small percentage of the total number of profiles installed on that machine. There is definitely a bug here somewhere. NX seems to get confused if you have too many profiles.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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>As a developer myself I would say the UI is different is
>all. It's not clumsy, at least no more than Capture 4 was.

One might argue whether the new GUI worse or as good as the Capture 4 one - it might even be a little bit better (not in opinion though). The point is, that it is definitely not a lot better - something it should haven been considering the fact that Capture's GUI has always been criticized.

Palettes opening up other palettes, overlapping panels, unused room on the screen, panels which are way too tiny, panels which can't be resized or reshaped, a nearly useless hide palettes view and so on...

There still is too much room for improvement.

>It's borrowing UI design from Mac apps and the Photoshop
>approach which is a little unfamiliar to Windows users.

As a long time Mac user I do not see a great deal of UI design comparability between NX and the usual Mac app beside the fact that NX uses palettes (something which tends to be seen as a Mac app feature I believe). I haven't seen a true Mac OS X app with such a bad GUI for a long time. If it was Nik's intention to let this thing look Mac-like, they should have had a look into Apple's GUI design guides.

I can see your point regarding the Photoshop approach, alas I have to add that NX uses a very bad implementation of the PS GUI because many of the problems with the NX GUI simply aren't there in PS.

>There are some bugs sure. This is a first release of a new
>product essentially, but I've not found any that are
>annoying enough to be a problem.

The problem is that most of the things other people and I criticize are not bugs, but - from our point of view - major design problems. I wouldn't call the GUI a bug, it's a wrong approach.

I don't want to say that NX is useless, from an image quality and tool capability point of view it is most probably the best converter available for Nikon RAW files, alas I also find it the most cumbersome to use because the GUI distracts me too much from what I want to do - concentrate on my images.

>As for the speed, all I can say is NX is *much* faster than
>Capture 4. It's odd that people are finding it slow. Loading

I also find NX to be faster than Capture 4, but maybe that's a problem comparing NX across different operating systems (here on Mac).

Bye,

Carsten

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Carsten,

very well said... I also want to update my post from yesterday. Initially I installed NX on a laptop that does exceed the minimum hardware/OS requirements according to the NX literature. It performed unmercifully slow to almost unusable for some functionality. Compared to Capture 4.4 on the same machine, Capture 4.4 actually outperformed it when comparing to similar actions...

Then last night, I installed NX on my desktop machine which is faster and has alot more RAM and to my delight it really was snappy. So, from a speed perspective, on good hardware, it looks to be a better performer than 4.4.

As far as the application itself, time will tell. Initially when I opened NX and saw the GUI I did not care for it. As I am playing with it, slowly it is becoming familiar. But I agree, I still think they could have learned a lesson or 2 from some other 3rd party raw converters in the area of GUI design and usablilty.

Best Regards,
Rob

http://www.robbohningphotography.com
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. -- Psalm 19:1

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I just downloaded it and installed. My first impression upon opening the first NEF is that the colors are "washed out" I opened the same file in Capture 4.4 and the colors are much better. I called my wife over to give her my impression and she said the same thing without knowing much about the programs, NEFs, etc.

I processed the file in NX to get it to be the best I could, saved it as a NEF and loaded it into Capture 4.4, the image looks washed out.

For now I am sticking with 4.4, hopefully Nikon-Nik will get it right down the road.

I find the new NX is a pretty good start, especially for a new remake and hopefully V2 will resolve most of the bugs I am noticing. I think the interface is good but a bit confusing, and some controls will get some use to, but this goes with every new software. The workflow and NEF
conversation will make it easier for me, (while i'm still waiting for Adobe Lightroom for Windows to appear public), so far this looks to be a good feature of NX. The NEF undestructable format is a great format.

However, I am noticing it to process very slow when I do a batches of over 80 images, and discovered it keeps on crashing when I do over 200-300 images at one go. So it does not seem to as stable or quick, Does anyone have this problem?

I am still trying to understand how all this U-Point technology works, but it looks promising and more powerful then most of the other photo processing applications in the market.

Cheers
Tom

I am seeing a weird behavior with my dual screen setup, I always set the tools on the second screen and NX is making all the icons flash on this screen on a regular basis. No other program including Capture 4.x does this.

Regarding the crashing-- no idea what's happening there.
As for batch performance-- NX will be slower than any other converter out there. The reason for this is because NX (and Capture 4 before it) writes all the changes back into the NEF. Other converters make their own set of tags in a small text "sidecar" file. Writing 2k of text is obviously much faster than writing 20MB of NEF.

This method has pros and cons. The benefit is that if you have the NEF, you have your changes-- no sidecar files to lose. The downside is slower performance and the small possibility of corrupting a file when saving.

To be clear, I haven't seen any of my NEFs get messed up after a save whether I used Capture 4 or NX.

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
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Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
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www.luminescentphoto.com

After reading all your thoughtful, sometimes scary, comments on downloading the NX preview, I've decided to wait for Nikon to come out with, at least, a .2 version. I've been waiting for NX to work on my last two shoots, but I think now I'll stay with Capture 4 and the slow-but-reliable workflow I have in place.

I guess I just don't have an early-user mentality.

Edo
www.edofoto.com

Edo

1.0 versions of anything are just when the company stopped calling it the "beta." version .2 or higher should get the kinks out...at least to the point of equalling Capture version 4.4

>
>After reading all your thoughtful, sometimes scary, comments
>on downloading the NX preview, I've decided to wait for
>Nikon to come out with, at least, a .2 version. I've been
>waiting for NX to work on my last two shoots, but I think
>now I'll stay with Capture 4 and the slow-but-reliable
>workflow I have in place.
>
>I guess I just don't have an early-user mentality.
>
>Edo
>www.edofoto.com

K. D. Smith, Jr.
My gallery: http://www.nikonians-images.org/galleries/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/1334

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

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That doesn't make sense.

The raw data is untouched by in the .nef file so nowhere near 20MB needs to be written. Nikon's not actually applying any changes when it writes the .nef file; it's just adding a set of edit tags. NX could and should be very fast to write the updated files. Nikon updates the embedded header image, but that should be quickly done using the image cached as you work.

On the other hand NX should be much slower to open files since it not only has to open the basic raw data, but it has to apply the settings and edits you've made to the cached image. That reality is easy to see. The image is displayed quickly but you wait a while as the camera settings (or NX edits) are applied before you can begin working.

BJ

Zenfolio gallery

NX also renders and embeds a much larger JPEG preview in the files when it saves, along with other information for the disk cache, etc. Apparently, color profiles will add about 1MB to the files, too.



Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

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Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

Thanks Jason for the information.

After playing more, I discovered more issues, the "slowness" is not very consistance and I now noticing that sometime even batching at 50 files can take forever (about 20 minutes). I did a batch run of about 200 images (just auto-level and converting to JPG), lefted it overnight and the next day it completed with a number of images failing the conversation - some images, missing the blocks or sections. It is the first I have ever seen. And I am wondering if the caching is causing of the issue (probably need more cache space).

You mentioned a couple times from other posts of the "base adjustment" causing part of the slow-down, which renders using Capture 4.4, now is it possible to turn the base adjustment to increase the performance.


Thanks.
Tom

Hi Tom-
By default, the Image Cache is limited. You can choose to use "unlimited cache space" by unchecking the "limit" checkbox in the prefs. Or, you can increase the max cache size.

As for "base adjustments"-- I'm not sure if turning these off would affect batch performance. Obviously, SOME of the base adjustments will always be used when processing, things like:

White Balance
Tone curve
Sharpening
Color Mode

Other adjustments that reside in the base adjustments are there for one major purpose-- to read those adjustments from files edited in an earlier version of Capture:

USM
LCH
Noise Reduction
Levels and Curves
Saturation
Photo Effects
D-lighting
Color Booster

These are the tools that I prefer to use outside of the base adjustments. In fact, I'm considering turning NR to "OFF" in my D2X from now on because having it on means that the NR step will be processed in the Base Adjustments when I inititally load the NEF-- I'm going to turn that off anyway.

While this organization may seem a tad confusing (why have the base adjustments at all if NX is faster), there is a logical reason. If you bring an edited NEF into NX, all those adjustments you applied in Capture 4 are still retained. If you make adjustments to a NEF in the "base adjustments" only-- your file remains backwards-compatible with Capture 4 as well.

Without the base adjustments, Capture 4 users would be forced to reprocess all their NEFs.

As to your original issue-- corrupted batch files-- this may be a bug. If you can consistently reproduce an issue, please send me an email or PM with exactly what is causing the problem, as well as your system configuration, and I'll be happy to pass this on to the software team at Nik Software (they actually do listen).

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

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Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

The Base Adjustments can't be turned off since they in fact contain the actual raw conversion.

In camera long exposure NR is still your best option for noise reduction when shooting long exposures. This happens in camera too, not in Capture NX.

Not all changes made in Capture are still retained. Cropping isn't unless you turn it back on in NX.

Bob Johnson - Earthbound Light - Nikonians Gallery
Nature Photography from the Pacific Northwest and beyond
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This is based on a quick trial run and didn't RTFM.

I was initially excited because I had been reading so much about how NX is to be really great. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I gave NX a try and found it to be unacceptably sluggish running on a 3Ghz with 1GB memory! Seem Nikon seems to continue having problems with performance for some reason. Really strange.

Moving the palettes is not intuitive (to me) at all...I wasn't able to figure it out, but I admit I didn't put a lot of effort into it.

After using CS2, Elements, Paintshop Pro and several other imaging packages I found NX to be less intuitive. This again is probably just a personal adjustment for me.

The issue with speed prevented me from wanting to put any more effort into trying NX out further. Hopefully Nikon will address this in the futur

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First the good points:
1. Control Points
2. Ability to read in-camera settings

The not-so-good:

1. It's still ridiculously slow. Even though I have a 3.2 Ghz PC with 2 Gigs of RAM, it was very slow opening NEFs. Not a big deal for someone who doesn't capture large numbers of images that they need to review and edit, but for those who do, this has to be a non-starter.
2. Nikon is more firmly controlling your images. I've been a Nikon user for 25+ years, but given the disappearance of ATT, the likely disappearance of one or more of the automotive Big 3 in the next couple of years, can anyone be confidant, today, that Nikon will still be here in 5 or 10 years? I'm not comfortable with that. If you are going to use NX you almost have to keep a virgin copy of your NEFs just in case.
3. Although I'm a PC user, no support for Mactels? You have to be kidding. Unless I missed it I haven't seen anything from Nikon indicating that it will support the Mactels. Given Apple's strong foothold in the arts, this is difficult to comprehend, and it's hard to understand how many pro photographers will take to the Nik software with this support missing.
4. Nikon's slow web support (versus, for example, Adobe) is troubling. It took forever to download the software. How many tried to download the manual? Takes forever. Yes, I know, Nikon is not a software company, so we shouldn't expect as much. Just my point.

There's some great points in the new program, and maybe, just maybe, this is the best quality converter for NEFs, which might must have me using it. But there's quite a few negatives to get over. I don't know...

Regards,
David

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

I dont understand why people are complaining about the speed of NX, I find it a lot faster than Capture 4.4 on a Intel 3.0 GHz and 1 GB ram.

I think the GUI is UGLY very UGLY!!

Some of the panels work a bit weird for my taste, like moving +- signs when expanding panels.

Try expanding Camera setting and then expand the browser panel as well, in my NX the camera setting panel goes blank, this doesn't happen with the File Direcoty and IPTC information panels.

Even though some things should or could have been designed better, and as with all new software products there are a few bugs to start with, i think this will end up being a very useable tool and I for one is looking forward to include it in my workflow.

All I need to find out now is if they are going to give all us 4.4 users an upgrade price and if so where can I upgrade?

(I still think it should be free when you buy a camera);-)

Cheers
Mikebj

>3. Although I'm a PC user, no support for Mactels? You
>have to be kidding. Unless I missed it I haven't seen
>anything from Nikon indicating that it will support the
>Mactels. Given Apple's strong foothold in the arts, this is
>difficult to comprehend, and it's hard to understand how
>many pro photographers will take to the Nik software with
>this support missing.


Yup - given the slowness of NX already, I don't see it competing with ACR when Adobe come out with a Mactel version next year, at which point Capture of all descriptions will be in the bin.

The main problem with NC has always been speed. Nikon had the chance to turn a new leaf but instead of addressing that problem they chose to mess around with pretty things like U-point. Big own-goal, IMO.

jeremyrh

---------
D300; F100; Nikkor 17-55/2.8; 70-200/2.8; 18-200; 85/1.4; 45/2.8 PC; 50/1.8; Sigma 30/1.4; 28-70/2.8; Tokina 12-24; SB900, SB600x2


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I have been told that a Universal Binary version is a top-priority for a pending service release.

In the meantime, I've been told NX runs on MacBook Pros fairly well under Rosetta-- its just not officially being supported by Nikon at this time.

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
www.luminescentphoto.com

Listen to The Image Doctors

Jason P. Odell
Colorado Nikonian
Author, The Photographer's Guide series of eBooks
Capture NX, Nik Silver Efex Pro, Digital Landscapes

www.luminescentphoto.com

Speed is a relative thing, isn't it. I'm running a 1 gig P3 on an old Asus with 396 megs ram. Its badly beat up and barely stable. My expectations were that this puppy was going to lock at the splash screen. Instead, after the "no disc" popup it booted fine. Granted, to say that a program runs faster than NC4 does put it on a large list. But it definitely runs faster. I only have time for half a sandwich instead of a whole one when saving files.

Seriously, I couldn't be happier with the program, especially being a 1.0 and it does run on my dinosaur. The gui is....funky, yes. Bottom line for me is that for the editing I need to do, I have no need to spend the money on PS. I'd strongly agree with the Dr that when you look at the big picture the advantages really add up. As well, it isn't realistic, I don't think, to compare the NX to PS. When you compare it to conversion/editing software made by other camera companies it shines. It definitely exceeded my expectations.

The 90 bucks for the upgrade is more than reasonable, especially looking back to the costs for slide film and processing, gas, tolls, etc. Its money well spent for me. If this program won't do everything I need to do to an image, I'll just be more careful next time and pretend I was shooting Velvia.

If anything, I believe Nikon has delivered a very good value. The fact that they'll hopefully turn a profit from the software is a reasonable expectation for any business and I for one would like to see them stay very healthy.


Steve
They say the Blues is coming back
Must be something wrong with my radio

Steve

http://notfromaway.com

I have .NET 2 and capture nx uses the older .NET 1. of course, if you keep your machine updated, you have problems trying to "upgrade" to NET 1. No matter. i have not had any problems using NET 2

K. D. Smith, Jr.
My gallery: http://www.nikonians-images.org/galleries/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/1334

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

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I wonder if the version of .NET could be the reason why some of us are experiencing sluggish response while others don't.

I already had the following versions of .NET installed on my PC; so, I used the Capture NX install file without .NET

v1.0.3705
v1.1.4322

Is it possible that upgrading to .NET v2 might solve some of the sluggish performance problems in Capture NX?

Jon D.
My Nikonians Gallery

Jon Davis
My Nikonians Gallery
My Flickr Gallery
My Epson R2880 Tips & Tricks blog

i have the latest .NET because I subscribe to MSN premium. i just ignored the 'failed to update .NET1' and CaptureNX works fine for me.

K. D. Smith, Jr.
My gallery: http://www.nikonians-images.org/galleries/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/1334

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

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