Lightroom vs Capture NX 2

YouCantSeeMeImaNinja · Feb 23, 2011

I just started playing with Capture and don't have much experience editing at all. I saw that lots of people on here seem to use Lightroom. Just wondering if there's a reason I should be using that instead of Capture. No reason to learn how to do everything in Capture if I'm just going to want to switch to Lightroom later on. Thanks for any suggestions!

Mike_E · Feb 24, 2011

If you shoot a Nikon, you'll probably want a copy of NX2 regardless. The proprietary software is worth the money if you want to maximize you efforts.

Welcome to the forum BTW.

tirediron · Feb 24, 2011

Capture NX2 is the clunkiest, most poorly designed application in recorded memory. The UI follows no known format or standard and it is about as intuiative as a brick, BUT it's the best program in the world for dealing with .NEF files. I use it almost exclusively for my RAW editing.

GeneralBenson · Feb 25, 2011

tirediron said:
Capture NX2 is the clunkiest, most poorly designed application in recorded memory. The UI follows no known format or standard and it is about as intuiative as a brick, BUT it's the best program in the world for dealing with .NEF files. I use it almost exclusively for my RAW editing.

I've never used NX2, nor do I shoot Nikon, so this is purely for curiosity's sake. But what do you find that NX2 does so much better with the handling of .nef files versus Lightroom/Aperture/Whatever?

Garbz · Feb 25, 2011

About the only thing it does is preserve the camera JPEG settings when converting the NEF files. You lose the Active-D lighting features if you open the RAW file in Lightroom, not that I think that is really a loss. Also you get the same colour and tone as the camera JPEG when you open the RAW file. Some may say this is a plus. Personally I think it results in wrong colours and happily pick the custom profile I made with a Colour Checker Chart in Lightroom any day. This ultimately is a taste thing.

The only thing in my personal opinion that NX2 really has going for it is the localised control point based colour adjustment tools, although you can get a Photoshop plugin that does this too: Nik Software, Inc. | Viveza 2

What Lightroom has going for it is a far more intuitive interface, the ability to organise and manipulate large numbers of photos at once, perfect integration with photoshop, a large repository of plugins, and damn I like the results I get with the sliders. Err not to mention that it will actually run without consuming 1GB of RAM just siting there and when I make a change it actually happens without me having to wait for the image to update (why am I waiting again on a quad core machine with 4GB of RAM?)

tirediron · Feb 25, 2011

GeneralBenson said:
...But what do you find that NX2 does so much better with the handling of .nef files versus Lightroom/Aperture/Whatever?

Hard to really quantify; I just find that I like the results better, although as Garbz mentioned, the control-points are a nice touch. The things that I DON'T like about LR are the huge amount of HDD space it wants to cache files and the continual nagging about importing/backing up images.

mhk1058 · Feb 26, 2011

Lightroom anyday both for cataloguing and processing, it just all flow so much more logically - for me anyway. I was initially wooed by the fact that Capture produced RAW files that looked just like the jpegs and I struggled to reproduce that in Lightroom - then it dawned on me that the whole point of shootoing in RAW is to end up with something better than a jpeg would be. Lightroom can acheive anything Capture can, even replicate Active D lighting with the Fill lightings and Blacks adjustments, which you should switch off if shooting RAW and processing outside Capture. It may take a bit of practice on the developing side but the whole libray/developing/slideshow/print/web flow of lightroom is fantastic. Now it also exports directly to flickr/facebook etc.

YouCantSeeMeImaNinja · Feb 28, 2011

Mike_E said:
If you shoot a Nikon, you'll probably want a copy of NX2 regardless. The proprietary software is worth the money if you want to maximize you efforts.

Welcome to the forum BTW.

Thanks!

YouCantSeeMeImaNinja · Feb 28, 2011

tirediron said:
Capture NX2 is the clunkiest, most poorly designed application in recorded memory. The UI follows no known format or standard and it is about as intuiative as a brick, BUT it's the best program in the world for dealing with .NEF files. I use it almost exclusively for my RAW editing.

Yeah it's a pain to figure out at first! (Especially not knowing wtf I'm doing! haha) But good to know about the RAW editing. Maybe I'll keep it just for that. Cheers!

YouCantSeeMeImaNinja · Feb 28, 2011

Thanks for the input everyone

Looks like I'll be using both programs.

Joseph Westrupp · Mar 2, 2011

Garbz said:
(why am I waiting again on a quad core machine with 4GB of RAM?)

I hear that, 16 bit files especially. I want to upgrade my PC already--or switch to Mac, which I hear performs far better for photo editing.

Wario · Mar 3, 2011

mhk1058 said:
It may take a bit of practice on the developing side but the whole libray/developing/slideshow/print/web flow of lightroom is fantastic. Now it also exports directly to flickr/facebook etc.

+1

I manage a Lightroom catalog of over 100k photos (DNGs). If you are serious about taking a lot of photos and loosing your mind over how to organize then or find them later, you need Lightroom 3. The publish settings making getting your work out there so easy, and it's the best photo catalog interface out there (Aperture's right up there too with there latest version)

Read Peter Krogh's book: The DAM Book, or watch anything by Julieanne Kost