- NIKON CAPTURE NX2 PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE FULL
- NIKON CAPTURE NX2 PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE SOFTWARE
- NIKON CAPTURE NX2 PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE ISO
While the RAW conversion of both images is very close (as seen in the full frame of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler), this detail of defocused lights shows the subtle difference between the two in the rendition of mono-color light sources. Let's look at how Capture NX 2 and Lightroom 3 handle this common effect in live music. With their singular saturation, these gelled incandescent PAR lights or LEDs are a surefire way to blow a color channel with a digital sensor. In live music photography, capturing lights in the frame is not only inevitable, it's often desirable. However, in comparing the new Lightroom 3 beta with Nikon Capture NX 2, Adobe's latest release isn't without flaws. All samples shown here were converted using these camera standard profiles, and the results should be considered specific to them.įor all effective purposes, I'm getting all the goodness I loved about Nikon Capture's conversions with none of the headache. Simply switching from “Adobe Standard” to “Camera Standard” applies a custom color profile to my Nikon D3 and Nikon D700 files that is very, very close to the proprietary profiles from Nikon. The elves at Adobe Labs seem to have been working overtime, because the new camera profiles are excellent. While previous versions of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw allowed users to tweak and calibrate default settings, the results never stacked up to the effortless results of Nikon Capture – that is, until now.
The saturation, contrast, and gradations of the files, as rendered by Capture, have always made for accurate and pleasing images with zero work. With Nikon Capture NX 2, I get brilliant color from my RAW files. Left: Capture NX 2 Right: Lightroom 3 – Can you spot the differences?
NIKON CAPTURE NX2 PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE ISO
Let's take a look at how Lightroom 3 beta stacks up to Nikon Capture NX 2 at my specialty: high ISO live music photography. With Lightroom 3 beta, I think that Capture NX2 finally has a real contender that matches Capture's image quality in many ways, exceeds it in some, and offers the great user interface and workflow that photographers have come to expect from Adobe Labs. While there are other converters like the excellent Raw Photo Processor that offer superlative detail, Capture's balance of pleasing color and overall image quality kept me coming back.
This deficit in image quality was something especially true when working with high ISO images – a fact of life for music photographers, wedding photographers, and anyone else shooting in dim and uncontrollable light.ĭespite slow performance, memory leaks, and a maddening user interface, Nikon Capture NX and NX 2 have long provided the image quality standard to which I hold other RAW converters. While previous versions of Lightroom have offered a very appealing workflow, with the ability to catalog, edit, and process digital images fluidly in a single application, the image quality has long left something to be desired when working with Nikon NEFs. Enter Lightroom 3.Įven as a beta release, Lightroom 3 is impressive. And while the current NX2 might offer excellent image quality, I'm always on the search for something better that offers a more complete workflow.
NIKON CAPTURE NX2 PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE SOFTWARE
But not out of any sense of masochism, but rather in the pursuit of the highest quality in converting my RAW files.Īs any casual user of Nikon software will swear (believe me, we all swear when using Capture NX), it's not for the joy of the experience. Which means that I've suffered for years. I've been a Nikon Capture NX user for years.