Nikon Capture 3.5 or Photo Shop

I'm just starting out in digital photography. My Nikon D100 came

with a trial version of Nikon Capture 3.5. I have loaded it to see

what it does, but was wondering if there is a large overlap with

Photoshop. I know one can use the former take photographs directly

to the computer's hard disk, but I don't see much of an advantage to

that.

The .NEF converters in Nikon View/Capture are useful plugins for PhotoShop. At one point, they only came with Capture. If you are going to spend the money for PhotoShop, you won't use Nikon Capture much unless you want to control the camera from a PC. Nikon View (which probably came as a freebie) on the other hand is a very useful tool to look at the lens and camera settings stored in the image (something PhotoShop 6.x doesn't do).

If you are shooting many nef files, either Capture or Bibble will prove essential. Both offer far more control over the camera settings than does the simple plugin.

I think Nikon Capture is useless unless you want to use the pc as a "remote control" to operate your camera. Photoshop is the most complete and "as pro" as one could dream. Unless you are working in a photo lab photoshop 7.0 should be plenty enough for your work. For the price of the D100 Nikon should have included the Capture as a free program - just like Canon incluudes Photoshop for free.

Save your money...