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Links & Comments
News and commentary of interest to Nikon and Nikon F-mount users
Clarifications on Capture NX2
July 29 (commentary)--Capture NX2 still does what it always did (unless, of course, you moved to a new version of your OS, in which case new issues may have turned up ;~). Thus, if your workflow uses it and you're happy, then keep using it. Nothing I wrote should change that. I didn't write "stop using Capture NX2," after all.
Some people over-interpret what I write (usually putting their own agenda on it). What I wrote was "I no longer recommend Capture NX2." Simple as that. I do not believe it to still be the product that stands out above the rest for a working Nikon NEF shooter. For someone choosing from scratch, Capture NX2 is likely to cause them more grief and problems in the long run than other choices. But if you've already built a workflow around Capture NX2, then nothing changed just because I stopped recommending it. If I had that much power over you, I'd have written "send me a check for US$100..." ;~).
However, some items need to be clarified:
- I was specifically referring to the latest ACR (CS5) and the latest beta camera profiles (get them from the Adobe Labs site). If you're using CS4, of course you don't get lens profiles, vignetting and chromatic aberration correction in ACR.
- U-point technology was unique when Capture NX2 first appeared, but Nik themselves have built plug-ins that bring it to Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. On the other hand, U-point is part of the US$179 Capture NX2, but adding it to the Adobe software is going to up the Adobe Tax considerably (see Plug-ins, below). However, in this particular article I was not writing about economical solutions, but rather about best solutions.
- "Photographer-centric" seems to be a point of contention. If you're a low volume shooter and work only on one image at a time, Capture NX2's workflow and speed probably don't intrude. Shoot a wedding in raw and try saying the same thing ;~). Shoot a pano or HDR or long-exposure stack set and try saying the same thing. True photographer-centric workflows work for both the one-shot cases and the many-shot cases without forcing you to change what you're doing. If you're a serious photographer, you will encounter both cases.
- The "lock factor." Capture NX2 only works with Nikon NEFs. Bought a Canon S90? A Sony NEX5? A m4/3 body? Any camera that shoots raw to be your carry-everywhere camera? (For awhile, that even included Nikon's own Coolpix P6000, as Nikon originally said they weren't going to provide NRW file support!) Capture NX2 in your workflow essentially locks you to Nikon DSLRs.
- Stability is variable with Capture NX2. I've always had a stable install on my desktop. But on my laptop it took repeated reinstalls and deep file system sleuthing and cleansing to get Capture NX2 stable. The historical pattern has been relatively consistent: OS changes, even point releases, seem to cause issues with Capture NX2 more regularly than they do with any other product I have installed on my systems. And I deal with people asking me about how to fix Capture instabilities every week, so I know I'm not alone in that. Also: a lot of Capture's stability problems stem from the installer itself and the many subfiles that it works with, including .NET on Windows machines. It's really difficult to recommend to someone that they potentially start down a path that may have them iterating installs and searching directory-by-directory for files to get a stable system.
- Performance of Capture NX2 is okay, as long as you have enough memory. But many of you saying that Capture runs "fast" are doing single image conversions at a time and/or haven't seen what current state-of-the-art really is when you've got 64-bit software using multiple cores done right. Unfortunately for Nikon, 64-bit multicore is now what ships from both Apple and Microsoft in pretty much everything except perhaps netbooks. It's the new standard. Thus, Capture's "performance" is now lagging what I'd expect to get with any new machine, and well behind state-of-the-art.
Some of you are holding out hope that Capture NX3 solves many (or all) of the current issues facing Capture. Let me remind you that Nikon's software record is not strong. Photo Secretary? Dead when they didn't update to USB (I managed to get it working on USB). Nikon Scan? Dead because they couldn't muster up resources to make minor changes for new OS versions even though they still sell the scanner that requires it. PictureProject? Dead. View? Dead, then resurrected with a new and different code base. Capture? Dead, then resurrected with a new and different code base and with features taken out. There's simply no continuity or clear vision in Nikon's software efforts, and there's far too much whim factor in Nikon's software dealings than continuity. Users want continuity. For a company that's been doing digital photography software for 15 years now, Nikon hasn't gotten very far.
Software Week--Plug-ins
July 28 (commentary)--Plug-ins are ubiquitous (except for Capture NX2, which only has one available ;~). Technically, a really savvy Photoshop user probably doesn't need any plug-in, as Photoshop is so loaded with low level abilities that you can pretty much conjure up any pixel modification you need. Obviously there are some exceptions to that--you can't apply a completely different algorithmic method (say, for sharpening) that isn't in Photoshop's core abilities. Still, if I want to move pixel values from where they are to somewhere else I need them to be, there's probably a way to do that in Photoshop without plug-ins. So why do I use plug-ins?
Plug-ins give you these primary benefits:
- They simplify. Most plug-ins provide a more direct method of doing something complicated.
- They extend. Some plug-ins provide functions that aren't available in the core of Photoshop.
- They group. Some plug-ins combine multiple operations into one.
- They layer. Good plug-ins can do the right thing in Smart Objects and they can layer up well for you so that you can mask, blend, and tweak them.
Overall, I've found more and more that plug-ins provide most of the leverage I use in pixel manipulation these days. Specifically, two suites do most of the heavy pixel pushing: Nik and Topaz. In the Nik suite my go-to tools tend to be Silver Efex Pro (for the best black and white conversions I've yet seen) and Color Efex Pro (mostly for handling tonality changes--I think I use about 2 of the 35 included presets ;~). I've also grown fond of Nik's Raw Sharpener, which gives me a one-click solution to do pretty much the same thing I had been doing with multiple steps before. Topaz Adjust and DeNoise have also become staples in my workflow, as well.
A slightly different approach (their tools appear on the File/Automate menu, not the Filter menu) is the OnOne suite. FocalPoint is useful for varying the appearance of focus after the fact, and the other tools in the suite are solid, too, and get used from time to time, too.
In those three suites we stack up a lot of flexibility and creativity to the basic Photoshop (or Lightroom or Aperture) base. I'm driven by two things in workflow: getting the best solution the fastest way possible, and doing so with consistency. The three suites I just mentioned help me do that, and I can recommend them all to you.
But I've got some bad news. Buying the whole set will also double or triple the cost of your basic software tools. None of these suites is inexpensive. Nik's suite is also not yet 64-bit compliant, which means we have to hobble Photoshop to use it, and sacrifice speed in doing so (the Topaz and OnOne sets are 64-bit). Using these suites to their fullest means you should also get up to speed on using layers and masking in Photoshop, which is going to take some time and trouble, too. Simply put, if you're not a layer fanatic, the suites get to be far less useful. Hint: PhotoshopWorld is coming up in Vegas at the beginning of September, and it's by far the best place to get your brain crammed with useful post processing information in a short time. I highly recommend it to any serious pixel pusher. I usually attend, though this year I'll be in Africa so will miss out on all the fun. Seriously, all you folk asking me how I do some of my processing (like that giraffe shot at the top of the page at the moment), PhotoshopWorld is a place where you can see people like Vincent Versace and others process a photo in dozens of layers using many of the tools I just mentioned. You get a thick book of take-home notes so that the stuff that overflowed your brain can be caught up on later. Oh, and all those suites I mentioned are being shown on the Exhibit floor and usually have discounts attached.
I'd be remiss at this point to not mention the contrarian view. Dan Margulis is well known for his amazing Lab Mode tricks in Photoshop (see my recommendation on the recommended books page). I don't know that I've ever seen Dan use a plug-in. He seems to just think in Lab Mode at some low level that most of us never have gotten to. Once he figures out the solution to a problem in CIE color space, he just uses Photoshop's native abilities to bend pixels. I admire his approach and his tenacity in pushing the core features of Photoshop to their limits. But I'm lazy, so I more often use the plug-in approach. And by the way, Dan is usually at Photoshop World demonstrating something new he's found how to do with Lab Mode. Someone is going to have to tell me what I missed this year.
If you're starting to get the idea that a serious digital photographer has a huge quiver of software goodies at his disposal, you're right. I use Photo Mechanic (transfer, metadata entry, and marking), Photoshop CS5 with the three suites I just mentioned (conversion and processing), and Lightroom (back end cataloging and storage). For HDR I've already mentioned HDRExpose. We'll get to panos soon, I promise. That's already a serious financial commitment to software and I'm not done describing everything on my recommended list yet.
Here's the thing: any serious pursuit is a money sinkhole. The first 80% of obtaining quality results is relatively inexpensive. The next 16% is exponentially expensive. The next 3% is exponentially more expensive. The next half percent doubles what you've spent so far. There aren't a lot of shortcuts. I mentioned Margulis because he's found some shortcuts, but he also sacrifices a lot of time to find each one. Time or money or both. That's the required payment for obtaining more quality.
Just a Reminder
The short articles on the front page of this site change quite often, sometimes multiple times a day. So if you're not checking the site often, be sure to check out the Archived 2010 link, below, as there may be a handful of items you missed.
Archived Front Page News and Articles
Archived 2010 byThom comments and news
Archived 2009 byThom comments and news
Archived 2008 byThom comments and news
Archived
2007 byThom comments and news
Archived pre-2007 byThom comments and news
Nikon announcements summary 2001-2010
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