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I have changed my mind.

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I have been playing around with NX after I got it free with the D300. I still do not feel like changing - I am too used to my workflow in ACR/PSCS3. The latest version of ACR has a few great tools that are not available in NX (Recover, Fill Light, Clarity, Vibrance) and nice sharpening controls (Masking, Detail). I am not saying that you cannot do that in NX, just that I like the way those tools work in ACR and I have come to understand what they do and how to use them to my advantage.

It is true that the starting point in ACR may not beas close to the final outcome as it may be in NX, since ACR does not use the info from the camera's settings,as NX does. But, you can tweak the defaults in ACR to do a pretty good job of that.

Anyway, I am not ruling it out altogether, I am only saying I am not ready to switch yet.

--
Regards,

Rafael

http://www.pbase.com/aviles
-----------------------------------------
'I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear
day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary's laundry, and
Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous
begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway
and more. It's a generous medium, photography.' Lee Friedlander
 
I'm not saying Capture NX isn't better than ACR, but I would like to be convinced by visual evidence. Like Rafael, I'm used to ACR & CS3, and I'll stick to them unless someone shows me that Capture NX can give results I can't get with my workflow.

Steve, (or anyone else) do you have a NEF file you could post for some post processing? I'll do my best with ACR & CS3, maybe Rafael will too, and others of you could edit the same one with Capture NX.

This website will let you post files to share.

http://drop.io
 
That's great news.

Unfortunately, NX 1.3.x still doesn't recognize the D300 NEF files on my Leopard Mac. Like many Mac users we're anxiously awaiting Nikon's fix to this perpelxing problem.
 
I use Lightroom now for most sorting and culling and RAW conversion of most shots. I rate images 5/5 when they are ones i might want to really spend time on and/or print at a large size. I have created an Export action to "export" the NEFs to a directory I set up for NX and then I have the option of using NX (obviously in parallel - the changes in one don't apply to the other).

I like the NX results quite a bit, but it is not intuitive to me and it frustrates me. Maybe future releases will improve things -- I don't even know if there are any releases on the horizon.

thanks for the thread,
Rob.
--
http://photo.robertokeefe.com
 
DougAbbott said:
That's great news.

Unfortunately, NX 1.3.x still doesn't recognize the D300 NEF files on
my Leopard Mac. Like many Mac users we're anxiously awaiting Nikon's
fix to this perpelxing problem.
Click to expand...
Doug,

I have an Intel Mac (iMac 24", white) running Leopard 10.5.2 and NX opens my D300 NEF's just fine. The only problem I've had is with the upgrade - it stalls when it tries to download it from within NX. I went to the Nikon site, downloaded the upgrade myself and installed it. Problem is, the version number did not get updated and NX still wants to download the upgrade...

--
Regards,

Rafael

http://www.pbase.com/aviles
-----------------------------------------
'I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear
day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary's laundry, and
Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous
begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway
and more. It's a generous medium, photography.' Lee Friedlander
 
Bob Quinn said:
I'm not saying Capture NX isn't better than ACR, but I would like to
be convinced by visual evidence. Like Rafael, I'm used to ACR & CS3,
and I'll stick to them unless someone shows me that Capture NX can
give results I can't get with my workflow.

Steve, (or anyone else) do you have a NEF file you could post for
some post processing? I'll do my best with ACR & CS3, maybe Rafael
will too, and others of you could edit the same one with Capture NX.
Click to expand...
Bob, this is what I spent 2-3 hours doing. Using layers it was easy to see the changes - and why. What I found was that ACR frequently had clipping in one or more channels. One of my images had the Blue channel shadows clipped AT THE SAME TIME it was clipping the Red channel highlights. As I used to teach PS CS3 at the college, I am pretty aware of how to tweak ACR files. Could this file be "saved"? Sure, but with a LOT of work. More importantly, the histogram for the Capture file always looked better. Often times it was bi-module, where the ACR would be a simple bell. I would see a lot more contrast in mid-tone variations with Capture than with ACR. That's why the image seems to have a more 3D look.

Actually, I am not trying to convince anyone - just stating my own findings.
Bob Quinn said:
This website will let you post files to share.

http://drop.io
Click to expand...
--
Steve Bingham
http://www.dustylens.com
http://www.ghost-town-photography.com
 
Something else. When comparing conversions I noticed that Capture was a little "rougher" textured - which suggested that it was using a little more sharpening than ACR. It took me a VERY long time to balance the files. Turning all sharpening off and all noise reduction off in both systems takes time. Although I could basically make both files appear almost identical in sharpness and noise reduction (now THAT was work) I seem to prefer the more aggressive sharpening of Capture in default mode as it really doesn't show until 100% - which means it probably won't show on large prints.

The kicker for me was the histograms. I HATE losing information.
By the way, Capture is still slow - even with my 3.5 G overclocked X6800 chip.
--
Steve Bingham
http://www.dustylens.com
http://www.ghost-town-photography.com
 
I always find USM of Photoshop (in luminosity channel) is a tad better than CaptureNX. Often I export the tiff to CS3 just to apply sharpening.

--
Philip

 
steve have u ever tried bibble?
 
RafaelD7 said:
What file are you editing (in ACR) if you are not editing the RAW file? I do not follow your statement above.
Click to expand...
You are correct, I probably should have said that you are not getting all of the NEF features from the file that you are in NX. For example the Picture Control information from the camera is ignored by ARC. And the design on NX is to edit and STAY in the RAW editor not converting to another format to finish your editing. NX all edits are done in NX from start to finish.
 
I've been using photoshop since 2.5, so to someone like me, most everything since ver.3 hasn't "blown me away" it's just little updates that they charge for. So the Adobe worship is quite silly to me. Adobe has competitors! And they don't give their advancements to Adobe!

But beyond all that... You'd think more people would just do a side by side comparison as you have. 2 pixs are worth thousands of words.

Anyway, another vote for NX here (for raw conversion to tiff, then it goes to photoshop)
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcovert
 
Steve Bingham said:
.... More importantly, the histogram for the
Capture file always looked better. Often times it was bi-module,
where the ACR would be a simple bell. I would see a lot more contrast
in mid-tone variations with Capture than with ACR. That's why the
image seems to have a more 3D look.....
Click to expand...
I suspect this analysis is one of the key things that people react to in prefering CNX. Once this is identified, it is a pretty simple step to incorporate in an ACR workflow, with several options available (curves adjustment layer, LCE layer, image> adjust> shadow/highlight> midtone contrast, etc). Not to say that either process is better, just different tools.

On the issue of whether CNX understands the tonal response of the sensor as a raw converter, I don't know how an objective comparison can be made (not denying it, just don't know the science -(defer to Iliah!)). I do have suspicions about ACR, tho because of the issue of people trying to calibrate ACR coming up with consistent treatment of red channel hue and saturation across many sensor/lens/etc permutations.

Another key point, IMO, is the notion of intuitiveness. Having used photoshop since V2.5 LE, I can appereciate that the 'Adobe way' becomes a way of thinking that must be unlearned to use a different tool, and as such, CNX faces a possibly unjust bar of unfamiliarity. (But it is a fact of life that we 'are' accustomed to a thinking process.)

Final (minor) point on usm -- in Adobe R=pixels vs R=% in CNX for people wanting to compare.
 
Congratulations from a Capture NX fan.

ACR/Lightroom never did it for me - too danged hard to get the frickin image to look like it did when I shot it, something that Capture NX gets right instantly.

-m
 
LuvLatins said:
LuvLatins said:
What file are you editing (in ACR) if you are not editing the RAW file? I do not follow your statement above.
Click to expand...
You are correct, I probably should have said that you are not getting
all of the NEF features from the file that you are in NX. For
example the Picture Control information from the camera is ignored by
ARC. And the design on NX is to edit and STAY in the RAW editor not
converting to another format to finish your editing. NX all edits
are done in NX from start to finish.
Click to expand...
OK, I understand now. Yes, NX uses all the information from the camera and ACR does not. I can get around that in ACR because I have been using it almost since it came out (and Photoshop even longer than that). I find that I would have to unlearn a lot of what I do now if I switched to NX. It is just a matter of having a set work process, which becomes intuitive (even though it involves three programs: Bridge, ACR, and PSCS3), and not wanting to climb yet another learning curve. If I were starting out, though, I would probably go with NX.

--
Regards,

Rafael

http://www.pbase.com/aviles
-----------------------------------------
'I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear
day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary's laundry, and
Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous
begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway
and more. It's a generous medium, photography.' Lee Friedlander
 
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