A 30-day trial of Nikon Capture NX has now been
released, Click here to go to Nikon's download page |
 |
|
 |
|
|
Details at a glance
RAW file editing
We clicked with
Innovative approach to editing. Non destuctive nature lets you rethink edits even to jpegs. Rich feature set and attractive interface. U-Point looks amazing
Shots in the dark
No spot editing tools
Links
More Nikon information
Nikon Capture NX
|
 |
|
Nikon Capture NX - first look
At ThinkCamera, when we review things, we review them. We get hold of them and play about. If it's a camera we use it in all kinds of conditions for all kinds of shots. If it's a piece of software then we delve into it, use as many of the features as we can and generally try to use it for real world jobs. This is not a review of Nikon Capture NX - I'm still waiting on a review copy from Nikon. This article is based on a presentation and live demo by Dennis Nicholl from Nikon UK and an extensive question and answer session.
What is it?
Capture NX is Nikon's new premium offering for editing raw camera files. It replaces their current Nikon Capture software although camera control functionality has now been moved sideways into Camera Control Pro and is no longer provided by Capture NX. The press release tells me that Capture NX has almost twice as many features as Capture.
Of course Capture NX doesn't just support raw files - it also allows you to edit tiffs and jpegs and then save them as raws. That's worth saying again. It allows you to take a jpeg and save it in a format where you can do non destructive editing almost like you had shot a raw in the first place. That's a pretty revolutionary step and is the main reason that Nikon are hoping to sell this product not just to Nikon owners but to people who use all kinds of cameras - they are promoting this as “all the Photoshop a photographer needs”. Those are my words but they are based on press releases from Nikon explaining why photographers (as opposed to digital artists) don't need Photoshop.
Strong stuff. Let's take a look.
What are raw files and this “non destructive” editing?
Let's take a step back here. When you take a picture with your camera it is captured as a “raw” file (all digital cameras do this but not all let you save the raw file), then it applies the current camera settings (white balance, sharpening, tone etc), compresses it and saves as a jpeg.
If your camera lets you save raw files then it saves the raw data that came off the chip and stores the camera settings as a set of “edit suggestions”. Open the file in you favourite image application and you may notice no difference but with a raw file you can change these “edit suggestions” without any change to the underlying data.
Change the white balance on a raw file after you get it to your computer and it's as though you set it correctly in camera. Even better, it is non destructive editing - you can save the file and a month later decide you don't like what you did and put it back exactly as it is was, or make a completely different edit all without changing the underlying data.
Nikon have taken this and extended it - every edit you make with Capture NX is non destructive. You can go back and undo it even after the file has been saved. And it's not just like being able to hit the “undo” button - you could have a stack of 20 edits to a file and decide to alter edit 3 and 9 - and maybe fade edit 17 back a bit. Some of this could be done in Photoshop by using adjustment layers but the resulting file size would be huge. Editing a file in NX adds a tiny overhead since the edits are held as a set of instructions rather than layers or copies of the file. Apple Aperture also does this but NX has some clever features even Apple don't have yet.
Continue reading on page 2 for the pros and cons of the program ->
Page 1: Introduction |
Page 2: Pros and Cons |
Page 3: Our Verdict
