New Nikon Capture NX announced

[srwatters]

See the announcement on DPReview http://www.dpreview.com/news/0602/06...ncapturenx.asp

Interesting. I'm hoping I can download an eval before I buy...

[Joe_Lorenzini]

On this one I'm jumping in feet first. I just hope they've improved the file open/save performance. The other tools will be nice but I really want some performance enhancements.

I hear Nikon View Pro was announced as well with file tagging and FTP uploading which for me will be good to try when on the road.

It's about time!!

_/oe

[Detonate]

Cool. Although I don't see myself ever trusting capture again. I'm still disgruntled over the money I spent on the last version.

At this point, I think it will be very very difficult to pry me away from ACR.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by Detonate

At this point, I think it will be very very difficult to pry me away from ACR.

Totally agree, but I might add that the moire removal and some specific RAW features of Capture are just better because Nikon knows the internals of the sensor and system. I'll test it and then decide.

[Detonate]

That is true. But really, is it to the point of making it worth adding in additional workflow?

One of the hardest things for me to wrap my head around in photography, was giving up on perfection and striving for consistant.

[evil4blue]

I'm excited about the new NX. To tell you the truth, the only reason I use ACR over Capture is the speed. ACR does give me better colors, but that's after doing all the calibration gyrations, and even then, there are times I just kinda look at the colors and say no way.

Capture is far superior for Moire control, High ISO NR, CA removal, and out of the box exposure. If NX lets me tweak my colors better and gives me the batch speed of Bridge/ACR. I'll be totally psyched.

The one thing I'm really having trouble with in ACR right now is its base, non-auto correct, exposure. To me, ACR's interpretation of exposure is completely different than what the camera actually recorded. I don't like that I have no idea why Adobe's base line is like +50 Brightness or +25 Contrast. What the heck are those numbers and who decided that those are correct.

[Joe_Lorenzini]

It's interesting to read these comments. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and dive into ACR once and for all.

I use Capture exclusively. Capture gives me tools that are similar to in-camera settings so using Capture is very much like using the camera itself. Like Steve mentioned, if I set the wrong WB or want to add some EV compensation, I can correct it in seconds just like I could if I were holding the camera.

I think Capture and ACR are very similar in nature they are just organized differently. Where ACR breaks Captures back is in speed. Capture just bites the dust when it comes to opening and saving files. That said, if you have 2GB of RAM this isn't that big of an issue. My version of Capture is pretty quick.

In the end though, it's all about workflow and what works for you.

Anyone interested in having an ACR vs Capture shootout?

_/oe

[Detonate]

The calibration tab in ACR is king.

I've heard people complain that their RAW files look like crap compared to their JPEG files. Well, that because you haven't calibrated RAW properly. I can easily get ACR to emulate what an sRGB jpeg out of the camera looks like. But why do that, when I can do better.

I know what you are trying to say about the exposure, Steve. But I've found that ACR isn't "that bad" with it's auto settings, if you use the exposure, brightness, shadow, and contrast auto settings in conjunction. For some reason it loves to bump the exposure way up on all of my images, but then take the brightness way down.

It seems to all be related to the what the highlight/shadow clipping is at, and ultimatley flattening the histogram.

Whatever it is, I don't like it.

Instead, I've come up with a set of default settings that I very very very very rarely ever change.

Most of the time what I'll do, say in the instance of the workshop this weekend.
I just open one image, make whatever minute tweaks I may like, then I go back to Bridge, highlight all of the images, right click, and choose "Previous RAW conversion".

Done.

[jeffkohn]

I'm with Jim, it would take something really special to pull me away from ACR, due in large part to the Calibration capabilities which make it completely unique from other RAW convertors.

The one area where Capture is worth using IMHO is high-ISO images from the latest SLR's (D50, D2x, and D200) because Capture (and in-camera) high-ISO NR is quite a bit better than what ACR/PS can do, even if using a third-party NR tool in PS.

The one thing I'm really having trouble with in ACR right now is its base, non-auto correct, exposure. To me, ACR's interpretation of exposure is completely different than what the camera actually recorded. I don't like that I have no idea why Adobe's base line is like +50 Brightness or +25 Contrast. What the heck are those numbers and who decided that those are correct.

I think what you're seeing is not an exposure problem, but rather that the tone curve used by ACR is more conservative. As a result of this, the images don't have as much contrast/pop by default as they do coming out of Capture. But that's a good thing, because I'd much rather add contrast in PS (easy thing to do, many ways to do it depending on the needs of the picture), rather than trying to remove it in PS (difficult bordering on impossible).

To me, fixing tonality/contrast in PS is much easier than trying to fix colors that aren't quite right, and that's why I like ACR so much. It makes getting accurate color a snap.

From what I've seen of Capture NX so far, the interface looks kinda gimmicky, though I guess it can't be much worse than Capture 4. To be honest though I'm much more interested in the upcoming Adobe Lightroom than Capture NX, as Lightroom looks to add some interesting new features to ACR as well as more seriously address the total workflow.

[jeffkohn]

It's interesting to read these comments. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and dive into ACR once and for all.

He Joe, since you have a D2x and we even have much of the same glass, if you do decide to try ACR let me know and I can send you some calibration presets to use a starting point if you don't want to go to the effort of doing your own calibrations.

[evil4blue]

Don't get me wrong guys, I use ACR almost exclusively now, but if Capture fixes its problems, I could be swayed back. I'm not going to pretend that ACR is the be all/end all for RAW processors.

I read the book on ACR, I know what all the sliders do, I even went through and calibrated all my lens at ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200 and I still have no clue why ACR decides to preset all there values where they are. I'm sure there's good reason, but in the end ACR is programmed to deal with multiple RAW formats and I can't image that Capture would be worse at dealing with its proprietary file type.

Like Joe said, minus the speed issue, I think that capture is much more intuitive than ACR, that being said if NX isn't on par with ACR's speed and color accuracy, I won't use it.

[srwatters]

I never use the 'auto' settings. I constantly save over the 'camera raw defaults' with both my calibrate data and exposure settings for the set I'm processing. I am getting really close to my goal of 5 minutes per image in post. The biggest issue for me still is the patch and clone work. That just takes time, but I'm getting better and better with the pen and tablet.

Adobe must LOVE me

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

He Joe, since you have a D2x and we even have much of the same glass, if you do decide to try ACR let me know and I can send you some calibration presets to use a starting point if you don't want to go to the effort of doing your own calibrations.

Thanks Jeff!! I'll take you up on that.

And I think you made a good point. I think Lightroom will overtake ACR as the RAW processer of choice. For that though I'll wait for the Windows version to evaluate.

_/oe

[Detonate]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

He Joe, since you have a D2x and we even have much of the same glass, if you do decide to try ACR let me know and I can send you some calibration presets to use a starting point if you don't want to go to the effort of doing your own calibrations.

Hey Jeff, I'd like to know what numbers you are using as well.

I did calibrate my copy, but I'm curious to see how close our numbers are.

I ran mine with the all of my lenses, and then used an average to come up with my defaults.

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Originally Posted by Detonate

Most of the time what I'll do, say in the instance of the workshop this weekend.
I just open one image, make whatever minute tweaks I may like, then I go back to Bridge, highlight all of the images, right click, and choose "Previous RAW conversion".

Done.

Capture is the same way but takes it one step further.

With Capture you can apply portions of saved RAW settings. So for instance, you can apply a set WB, USM, Color Mode to ALL your images and then go back and set specific exposure compensation to a different or subset of selected images. Very helpful when you have 4 models in different setups.

Of course it all comes at the price of speed so I'll shut my pie hole now.

_/oe