Question about D90 and Capture NX

[NateS]

So, I'm planning to upgrade to the D90 in a month or so and wondering one thing. Am I going to be forced to upgrade to Capture NX 2 to handle the RAW files of the D90? If so, that kinda sucks since I just purchased Capture NX like 6 months ago.

 

[inTempus]

Invest in Lightroom 2 or Aperture 2 (if you're a Mac user) and stop worrying about RAW compatibility. I even shoot in SRAW sometimes and Lightroom imports it and edits it without a hitch.

I hate proprietary software.

 

[dEARlEADER]

So, I'm planning to upgrade to the D90 in a month or so and wondering one thing. Am I going to be forced to upgrade to Capture NX 2 to handle the RAW files of the D90? If so, that kinda sucks since I just purchased Capture NX like 6 months ago.

I think you might have to... but .. FWIW Nx2 is a lot better than NX.... this isn't saying much... they are still both crap IMO....

I don't think it costs much to upgrade though.

Get LR2 and call it a day if you shoot raw and process your own images. If you depend on incamera settings NX2 is the way to go as it reads ALL as shot detail into the conversion (including d-lighting).

 

[NateS]

Heck no. I HATE the way ACR handles my raw files. It remembers NONE of my camera settings and when imported looks nothing like the photo I actually took. With Capture NX when I open the file it looks exactly like what I took and I only have to do tweaks to get the file where I want it. With LR2 I spend 5 minutes just to get the picture back to looking the way it did when I snapped the shutter button.

I've been very happy with NX...it's a memory hog, but I bought a new computer to handle that. It doesn't do everything I need, but it does probably 90% of what I need. I don't remember all of what NX2 has over NX, but do remember that none of it seemed like it would benefit me that much.....oh well, I guess I can just tack on $109 to the price of a D90...such a crappy deal. I really wish I could be happy with LR2 so I could get away from the one thing I hate (being forced to upgrade software when upgrading computers), but I just can't get used to the way it handles my RAW's.

 

[dEARlEADER]

That's no big deal.... You can save as many presets as you want in LR2 and assign that preset to an image(or a series of images) with a click of the button. You would also be able to do all of this before NX even had your raws loaded it's so friggin slow.

LR2 also has Nikon dx presets available if you don't want to roll up your sleeves.

You can also change the way LR2 handles images by their ISO setting and have saved noise reduction presets automatically applied.

 

[NateS]

That's no big deal.... You can save as many presets as you want in LR2 and assign that preset to an image(or a series of images) with a click of the button. You would also be able to do all of this before NX even had your raws loaded it's so friggin slow.

LR2 also has Nikon dx presets available if you don't want to roll up your sleeves.

You can also change the way LR2 handles images by their ISO setting and have saved noise reduction presets automatically applied.

Ha....wish I had known all that when I had the trial of LR2....which is now expired. Now I can't use the trial to play with the things you just said.... Another plus is that I can get an education discount for LR2 and get it for pretty cheap. No matter how you look at it though, I'm gonna be forced to upgrade/buy software which is an unexpected expense and kind of sucks. I may try and find a way to try out LR2 again....different computer or something.

 

[AlexColeman]

Use DXO, it processes raw way better,and won't crash your computer like the buggy nikon crap.

 

[NateS]

Use DXO, it processes raw way better,and won't crash your computer like the buggy nikon crap.

DXO actually looks promising but I'm not going to try the demo just yet. I can get LR2 for $100 through the education discount and DXO is about 170 for the standard. I realized that I had only done the demo for LR2 on my laptop and not the desktop home computer (the actual photo workhorse) so I'm downloading LR2 to play with the things mentioned here (Nikon Dx presets and stuff). If I can get my files to the way they look on camera quickly then I might have a winner. I'm hopeful.

 

[dEARlEADER]

DXO actually looks promising but I'm not going to try the demo just yet. I can get LR2 for $100 through the education discount and DXO is about 170 for the standard. I realized that I had only done the demo for LR2 on my laptop and not the desktop home computer (the actual photo workhorse) so I'm downloading LR2 to play with the things mentioned here (Nikon Dx presets and stuff). If I can get my files to the way they look on camera quickly then I might have a winner. I'm hopeful.

LR2 takes a little while to get set up if you are using it to it's full potential..

Expect to put in quite a few before you can reap noteworthy results.

 

[NateS]

LR2 takes a little while to get set up if you are using it to it's full potential..

Expect to put in quite a few before you can reap noteworthy results.

Well, I'm off today and my son just went down for his nap so I should have a solid 2 hours to play with it. That should at least get me going in the right direction (I hope).

 

[dEARlEADER]

Well, I'm off today and my son just went down for his nap so I should have a solid 2 hours to play with it. That should at least get me going in the right direction (I hope).

lol... i have young son...

you don't have enough time....

 

[NateS]

lol... i have young son...

you don't have enough time....

Lol.....I know, and my evening classes start back up tomorrow. That's the problem is I don't have a ton of time to play with it and learn the new software. I guess we'll see where I can get in the next 30 days before the trial expires.

Edit: Sitting here waiting while LR2 imports 4000 of my photos......*twiddles thumbs*.

 

[NateS]

Well, after playing with LR2 for about 2 hours, I'm still at my same conclusion as before. I spent about 1 full hour messing with the settings (comparing side by side with my NX version) and was never able to reach the same result (and no matter what I did, I preferred the NX version).

I used the different Nikon modes and tweaked from there and still couldn't get it as good as my NX copy. So, I guess I'll just shell out the 109 bucks and upgrade to CNX2 when I get the D90.

I personally don't find NX too bad (resource wise) since I've upgraded my computer and can make changes pretty fast. I usually can apply any exposure and white balance changes to an entire batch through View NX, then whatever is needed in NX.

The file that I spent an hour on in LR2 today took me maybe 1-2 minutes in Capture NX and that includes the selective eye sharpening. Oh well...might as stick with what I know and what works best for me.

 

[Garbz]

Well, after playing with LR2 for about 2 hours, I'm still at my same conclusion as before. I spent about 1 full hour messing with the settings (comparing side by side with my NX version) and was never able to reach the same result (and no matter what I did, I preferred the NX version).

Lightroom was never designed to match the Capture NX results for reasons I will get to, but there is a very easy fix:

Adobe Labs - Homepage Jump in and grab the Adobe Camera Profiles beta 2. These profiles which work with ACR and Lightroom mimic the colour rendition of the camera manufacturers. In the case of a Nikon camera you will get 8 profiles, Capture NX Landscape, Portrait, Standard, Neutral, 3 profiles mimicking Nikon D2X camera modes, and the new Adobe Standard profile scheduled to be included in Lightroom soon anyway. These mimic Nikon perfectly. If they don't you stuffed a setting up somewhere, and if you like them then pick one and make it the default import for your camera.

Now as to why they don't do this in the first place: Processing a RAW file is up to the manufacturer, and each manufacturer does this differently. In Lightroom processing RAW files is up to Adobe, and Adobe keeps things standardised throughtout their entire suite of products. Adobe's goal is to make all cameras be it Nikons or Canons or Leicas render the same colour in a way that is 100% compatible as described in their open DNG specification. From this basis alone and given the vast difference between JPEGs from various camera manufacturers you can see that Lightroom will normally look like neither Capture NX nor the Canon equivalent software.

But for many people (*puts my hand up*) the Lightroom defaults looked better than the over saturated, cartoony results produced by the camera / Capture NX anyway (personal opinion). Oh and Lightroom / Photoshop ran on my laptop processing several images at once. On Capture NX I couldn't open one RAW file without running out of memory.

 

[sabbath999]

Use DXO, it processes raw way better,and won't crash your computer like the buggy nikon crap.

Not that I am against DXO, but I have never had my computer crash once in the two years I have been using Capture NX, pretty much using it every day.

Then again, I run a Mac.