Now that Aperture is out...

[prince_alfie]

Aperture appeared on the shelves yesterday and it can read NEF files

and manipulating those directly. Makes RAW look easy to use... But

there is there now any point for Nikon to sell the Nikon Capture anymore?

[michael_bradtke]

I use Capture of other things then editing my images.

Like controlong my camera from my computer.

[dan_brown4]

I am hopeful that Aperture will replace Capture, View, and PhotoShop for me. Of course, I

need a new computer first :^(

[gaius1]

Can anyone point to a serious comparison of Aperture and C1? I can't find one on the web.

 

Anyone remember Apple's ClarisWorks? Was there a point for Microsoft selling Office after that? :-)

[erickpro]

Nikon Capture is only $99 USD. Aperture is $499 USD. Aperture is for more professional business use. Capture is semi-pro to pro.

 

And if I am not mistaken, you can only control your camera remotely with Nikon Capture.

 

 

I'll be more afraid of Phase One Capture not sellig as much as aperture since it is at the same price but you can do way more stuff with aperture and faster with only two clicks on a single button mouse than what you can do with 5 clicks on a 3 button mouse.

[frank_skomial]

Put aside all image editing capabilities of both programs (RAW or not RAW), what is left in Nikon Capture, is remote wireless or via USB cable controlling capability of the camera, with direct storage of pictures into computer hard disk, and instant display of picture on large LCD screen of the computer.

 

"But there is there now any point for Nikon to sell the Nikon Capture anymore?" - YES, by all means. If you use Capture for picture editing only, so perhaps the same or better job can be done in Photoshop or other software, depending on your computer skills.

 

For studio work, I shoot portrait, and the photo shows instantly on connected computer's LCD screen. Then I discuss the picture of a person with that person in next few seconds after picture was taken. Seeing picture in full glory and all possible imperfections is helpful. Frequently there is a need to try a better picture right away, untill the photographed person is satisfied with his/her portrait.

This is the main advantage having Capture.

[rich_dutchman1]

Photo District News (pdnonline.com) has an incredible Aperture review. Too bad I'm on a PC.

[marshall]

I don't see Aperture completely replacing Photoshop for people who use any filters or need the flexibility of layers and masks. But I haven't used it or toured it extensively.

[tom_burke3]

I've just read some comments about Aperture in a magazine in the UK. First, it's not clear

whether Apple had the support of the camera manufacturers

in writing their RAW converters or whether they reverse-engineered them. Second,

apparently there is no support for mdium-format scanning backs other than those that

use Adobe's DNG file format.

[brad_vautrinot]

Not being a working pro photographer, workflow isn't as important to me as it is to some

on this forum. I also haven't completely looked at Aperture's capabilities as shown on

Apple's website. But from what I've seen so far, I'm going to pass for the following

reasons:

 

I already own Photoshop CS2 which includes their excellent camera raw and Bridge. To

quote from the PDOnline article - "If for nothing else, Aperture will be remembered as "the

software that forced all the other programs to get better"." and I feel this is what will

happen with Adobe's products and other software programs.

 

I can't justify spending $500. for a Raw processor and catalog database when PSCS2 does

such a fine job AND offers superb editing capabilities which Aperture does not. I also have

iView 3.0 for cataloging and other chores.

 

Does the above make sense or am I woefully uninformed about Aperture vs. PS and iView?

 

Brad

[mgvaughan.com]

Pixmantec's rawshooter is worth considering prior to an Aperture or CS purchase. It's both affordable and effective with RAW workflow.

Visit: http://www.pixmantec.com/

 

I process through Rawshooter before CS. In our workflow Aperture is already obsolete and overpriced.

[johnw63]

If you can find a friend or relative that is a school district employee, the Education price is

$249. That might make it more attractive.

[lex_jenkins]

An image editing program that offers RAW conversion and basic editing features shouldn't cost more than $100-$150. Anything pricier, you might as well jump up to Photoshop - assuming you can really justify it.

 

I'd hoped RawShooter could replace Capture 4.x for RAW conversion and basic image editing. The RawShooter workflow is much faster. But, at least with NEFs, RawShooter Premium didn't fix a critical problem with the RawShooter Essentials prototype: Smudging of fine details and introduction of odd artifacts, especially with the use of noise reduction and sharpening.

 

Capture remains superior to most programs I've tried for cost effective, faithful RAW conversions. The workflow isn't fast or better than anything else out there. But it offers camera control, which is a major plus for some folks.

[dan_brown4]

John W. Dang! Thank you for pointing that out, my wife works for the local school district

:^)))))

[mgvaughan.com]

Rawshooter is $99- Lex, perhaps you could post an example of smudging in fine details and odd artifacts. I would be interested to see them. Have you mentioned this in the Rawshooter forum for the next upgrade?

[lex_jenkins]

Here are some examples comparing simple edits with Nikon Editor (the bare bones editor that comes with Nikon View/Browser) with RawShooter Essentials. I didn't see any differences in how RawShooter Premium renders NEFs so using RSE for this comparison is sufficient here.

 

The first image is just a full frame view reduced for web viewing. Some quickie tweaking was done.

 

The next two images are crops from the original RAW files - no tweaking at all. The crops are resampled upward for clarity (using B-Spline in Irfanview).

 

Obviously there are differences between the cropped and enlarged images, which would seem to indicate that RAW converters do have some influence on the appearance of photos even when no adjustments are chosen. I've read that RawShooter does impose certain adjustments on RAW files and my experiments seem to corroborate this.

 

Using Nikon View/Browser as well as Nikon Editor and Nikon Capture 4.x as a baseline for comparison purposes - which is valid because NEFs all look virtually identical when viewed in these programs - it's apparent that RawShooter interprets NEFs differently or imposes certain changes. In an attempt to minimize this effect I set the Processing Parameters to zero, which actually increased artifacts. The example shown here was with Sharpening Bias and Detail Extraction vs. Noise Suppression set to -50.

 

At first glance it's apparent that NEFs viewed in Nikon View/Browser, Editor and Capture seem "grainier". The same photos seem smoother in RSE and RSP, altho' this comes at the expense of fine detail and in some cases interference of adjacent colors. I've read comments on the web that RawShooter inherently minimizes chromatic aberrations, but I haven't seen this benefit. Instead it seems to introduce phantom colors where none existed. Look in the lower horizontal lines forming the numeral "12" on the roof of the car. These should be a clean yellow, which they are as rendered by the Nikon software. RawShooter introduces phantom greenish streaks. Similarly, it misinterprets the colorful decals on the race cars.

 

Since I didn't use any other tweaks, including noise suppression or sharpening, the other artifacts I mentioned aren't visible here. In enlarged photos the artifacts appear as rough cross shapes. At least one other RawShooter user has noted this on the Pixmantec forum - there was no reply to his comments from Pixmantec.

 

I've tried every conceivable setting in RSE and RSP to overcome these deficiencies. While RawShooter's workflow efficiency is excellent these deficiencies make it unsatisfactory to me for producing finished high quality JPEGs from NEFs in too many situations. In order to make RawShooter useful it would have to be limited to a RAW converter with few adjustments made in RawShooter, performing the important tweaks on TIFFs after conversion in another program. To me, that's inefficient.

 

I've concluded that Pixmantec is satisfied with the performance of RawShooter because it's proven to be satisfactory to Canon dSLR shooters, who appear to make up the great majority of RawShooter users.<div></div>

[lex_jenkins]

Here's the upsampled crop from the same photo.

 

Again, the original NEF was cropped in Nikon Editor, saved as a 16-bit TIFF and resampled upward in steps using B-Spline in Irfanview. The original crop was approximately 520 pixels wide - the final image is approximately 1600 pixels wide. No other tweaks or adjustments of any kind were made at any point. The final upsampled image was saved as a high quality JPEG.<div></div>

[lex_jenkins]

Same crop, after converting NEF to 16-bit TIFF in RawShooter Essentials. No tweaks, etc. Upsampling as already described - B-Spline in Irfanview.<div></div>

[mgvaughan.com]

Rawshooter has been acquired by Adobe to help create Lightroom.