Unleashing Capture NX 2
It’s always fun to watch the waves of new digital technology pound on the shore of established workflow. On June 3rd, Nikon announced the introduction of Capture NX 2 — the second-generation of its innovative approach to RAW processing. Simultaneously, Acme Educational, the brainchild of Vincent Versace, announced the release of the 2-DVD set “Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2“. So, you can get a headstart on your NX 2 workflow by getting the disks from Acme now at an early-bird price {details below}. Nikon is slated to start shipping NX 2 around June 20th.
Just as Lightroom brought a new interface to Adobe’s approach to RAW processing, Capture NX uses an equally intriguing, yet competing, approach. At the heart of Capture NX are Control Points – essentially a set of sliders that you drag to the point of correction. Think of Control Points as a heads-up display on the windshield of a jet fighter… your controls are right at the point that you want to watch.
For those not familiar with Capture NX, CaptureNX.com is the place to go for an intro. You’ll find flash demonstrations of Caputre NX’s innovative Control Point interface. You’ll also find the link to download a 60-day trial version of Capture NX 2.
New to Capture NX 2 are:
- Support for dual monitors
- Selection Control Points – enabling functions such as Sharpness and D-Lighting to be applied to limited areas
- Auto Retouch Brush – removes dust specks with a simple brushstroke
- Workspaces – set up your workspace based upon the current task at hand / Browser, Metadata, Multi-purpose and Edit are presets. You can also design custom workspaces.
- XMP Label / Rating Support
- Simultaneous Opening of Multiple Settings
- Shadow / Highlight Adjustments
As mentioned above, Acme Educational has begun shipping the 2-DVD set “Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2″. For those quick on the draw, you can save $15 by ordering now. Once Nikon starts shipping NX 2, estimated to be around June 20, the normal (and still a good value) Acme price will be $59.95. So, calculators at the ready, the early-order price is $44.95.
Unleashing The RAW Power of Capture NX 2
Disk One is affectionately called “Pixel Bootcamp 2.0″. You’ll find a dozen chapters covering every nut and bolt that makes up Capture NX 2. Even advanced photographers who think they have their head completely around the world of RAW processing will discover many useful nuggets to add to their workflow.
Disk Two “From Here to There In Less Than Eternity” covers advanced image editing workflows. Of special interest to fans of infrared photography are three chapters: Standard IR, Enhanced IR and Deep Black IR. And, this being a Versace production, new material on black & white is also included.
I process everything through NX2 now. Its a great program – but it has some easily fixed flaws (see below). Among the good points are multiple undo, complete flexibility, very fast implementation of control points (Viveza in Photoshop is tediously slow in comparison although made by the same company Nik)
1. if you save as JPG, then close, it will allow you to close the NEF file and lose all your edits without any warning at all. PS is smarter about this, and knows if you save as JPG you don’t mean to trash your oridinal PS file edits.
2. one of the main complaints about NX2 is its slow to make changes – compared to both PS and LR. Many times its little clock is running for a minute or more (quad intel mac with 8gb ram). They could have an option to have a beep so you can see when the changes take place – instead of keeping one eye on the image and one eye on the clock.
3. the color correction is pretty bad in general. LR can automatically do wonderful color correction. But NX2’s automatic computation is ALWAYS worse. If you don’t have some white in the image, its extremely hard to get the right color balance. The red/blue graphs are not quite fidgety and there is that time gap to process as usual. This really needs to be improved. The auto-level and pro-contrast don’t do a very good job either but you can put them in advanced mode and tone them down.
4. there is no memory for the plug in settings. For example using High Pass – you need to change the radius, the overlap mode, etc… every time. For the unsharp mask you have to increase the amount and radius from nil… every time you use it. Colorize.. you need to change opacity and blending mode… again every time you use it. Why can’t remember what you use the last time? Another case is doing multiple graduated filters.
5. there is no blur tool for selections – other than the global feather
6. the color selection tool – even at its minimum is slightly too large for the whites of eyes.
7. the panel of operations quickly gets unwieldly.
8. the workspaces are clumsy
9. the grid is only one when hovering the mouse over the image
10. LR rotate feature please. The straighten tool seems like a good idea, but in practice is a pain – because there are non-parallel and non-perpindicular lines and you need to adjust by eye.