Nikon Capture 4.4 (optional software)

Nikon Capture 4.4 is the latest version of Nikon's advanced image management, editting and RAW conversion application which started life with the D1 back in 1999. Nikon Capture has always been an optional purchase (around $99), and remains so with the D200. Unlike previous models Nikon hasn't included a trial version in the box, instead you can download a trial from the Nikon website.

Nikon Capture Editor

The sub-version update from 4.2 to 4.4 has added a few new features but hasn't changed the overall look and feel of the application. New features include color aberration control (chromatic aberration correction), red eye correction, a B&W color mode, improvements to tones in highlights and improvement on memory usage (we had a moan about 4.2 with its 1 GB memory usage to convert just two images.

Below you can see a capture of a typical Nikon Capture session, with the toolbar on the left, image preview in the center and tool palettes on the right. Some tools are available for both JPEG and RAW images and some only for RAW.

Major Features

• Open JPEG, TIFF and NEF (Nikon RAW) files (recognizes shot color space)
• Save as JPEG (five levels, embed profile)
• Save as TIFF (RGB or CMYK, 8 or 16-bit, compression, embed profile)
• Save as NEF with embedded image adjustments
• Process images in batches, can be set up as a batch conversion 'server'
• Multi-image display, thumbnail strip or pages
• Full view, zoom (up to 1600%) and scroll images (fast and smooth)
• Bird's Eye view of image (overview with fast scrolling)
• Point information, Histogram, Markers
• Detailed shooting information (general, lens used, exposure, camera settings etc.)
• Show grid lines and focus areas
• Show lost highlights or shadows with a single keystroke
• Crop image
• Selectable color spaces for monitor, printer and CMYK separation
• Edit IPTC information (see previous page) including load/save IPTC info
• Print (single or multiple images)
• Copy & Paste Image Adjustments between images (single adjustments or the 'set')
• Load & Save Image Adjustments
• Flip (horizontal / vertical)
• Rotate (-90°, +90°, +180° or arbitrary, including 'draw level' feature)
• Image resize (including ppi)
• Select image area and save selection
• Create camera tone curves
• 'Receive' images directly from Camera Control
• Transfer images to Adobe Photoshop (in 8 or 16 bit mode)

Image Adjustments

• Curves & Levels (including black, gray and white point sample)
• Unsharp mask (multiple masks can be overlaid; intensity / width / threshold)
• D-Lighting (HS / HQ, adjustment, color boost)
• Color Booster (people / nature, level, auto)
• Size / Resolution (resize, change ppi)
• Photo Effects
• Red Eye Correction
• Noise Reduction (optional edge noise reduction)
• LCH Editor (master lightness, color lightness, chroma, hue)
• RAW only adjustments (.NEF)
  • Digital exposure compensation (+/-2.0 EV in 0.01 EV steps)
  • Sharpening (Unchanged, None, Low, Medium Low, Normal, Medium High, High)
  • Tone comp. (Unchanged, Low, Medium Low, Normal, Medium High, High, User)
  • Color mode (Unchanged, I, II, III, Ia, IIIa, B&W) *
  • Saturation compensation (Unchanged, Moderate, Normal, Enhanced)
  • Hue Adjustment (+/-9° in 3° steps)
  • White balance (Recorded, Gray Point, Auto, Incandescent, Daylight, Standard Fluorescent, High Fluorescent, Flash, Kelvin temperature) - fine tunable
  • Image Dust Off (using dust reference image)
  • Vignette Control
  • Fisheye Lens correction
  • Color abberation correction

* Modes I, Ia, III and IIIa are sRGB, mode II is Adobe RGB

Nikon Capture Batch processing

You can easily configure Nikon Capture to process a batch of images, either a single folder or multiple folders. You can even leave it checking for images and converting them automatically, this would be useful in a multi-user office network environment where RAW files could be 'dropped' into a standard shared directory and automatically processed by the Nikon Capture server. This can also be useful in a wireless environment where compressed RAW files could be written directly to a server which was custom processing them ready for transmission or output.

Nikon Capture Options

The Options dialog allows you to control various default settings such as the 'user default' set of image adjustments, temporary files, color options, grid lines and color management settings (color space used for monitor, local print and CMYK output).