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Capture NX 2 trial version released.


john schroeder

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I can't tell you guys why, but I have to tell you I feel like Nikon have placed me in a difficult situation. I know something probably the rest of you have no idea about & I'm really irritated. I feel they've manipulated me & the situation.

 

There's just something about this whole thing which turns my stomach inside out.

 

Lil :-(

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Just downloaded the trial. It's less than 50MB, so that only took a couple of minutes. Setup went very quickly, and didn't disturb my exising v1 install. Initial observations:

 

The file browser is greatly improved, and feels a lot snappier. Just the ability to quickly shift the size of the thumbnails in a less quirky way... nice. Quick toggling to a list showing file sizes and time-stamps, nice.

 

Images open into the editor more quickly than before. Having all of the processing widgets in non-flying-out, non-popping-up tools in the right-hand docker... nice. The "develop" section, previously the baseline exposure changes for what came across from the camera's preferences... much easier to work with, and enhanced with a range of the most common tweeks right at hand.

 

Persistent sliders for things like brush sizes, rather than having to fly them out to change them? Nice. Healing tool? Works like a charm (finally! - don't need to open the file in another app to fix just one little thing).

 

Lots of little improvements. When adjusting a slider for a control point (say, brightness), the other sliders on that tree are supressed, the better to see what you're doing to the image. A one-key presentation display against a full-screen black background. Nice.

 

More later, though I'm sure others will be more particular about it. Bottom line: I've just installed it on two different machines... a grostesquely overpowered desktop machine (it flies), and a run-of-the-mill laptop with 2GB of RAM. Works fine, and quicker on its feet than the previous version.

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Matt or anyone else - have you verified that files edited with 2.0 can then be opened

without harm in 1.3 and vice versa? I don't save backups of my images in unedited form

(only backups of the NEFs periodically).

 

Thanks.

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Joel: So, I opened an NEF file in NX v2, and performed vanilla changes to brightness/contrast, and performed some localized tone changes. That file opened up in NX v1.

 

I then performed a new edit in v2, using the healing tool (which is new to the new version). On opening the file in v1, I got a pop-up nag telling me that there was "an enhancement used on this image that is not installed," etc. The warning indicates that any changes made by that new enhancement will not be present. Sure enough, all of my other edits WERE opened and rendered in the old version, just not (of course) the healing brush changes. I made a new change in the OLD version, and saved, and the re-opened the file in v2. The original changes were present, as well as the new edit from v1... but v1 had stripped out the healing brush change, and it was not preserved on opening in v2.

 

So, that all makes perfect sense. The NEFs don't appear to be damaged passing back and forth between versions, but to the extent that v2 can do things that v1 can't, there will be the expected lumps and bumps.

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For those of you that are having trouble installing NX2, at Nikonians.org, this helpful hint has been posted by Jason Odel:

 

Mark-

I strongly recommend deleting your old (NX) cache files and then reinstall the software. That usually fixes things.

 

-Jason

 

I do not have enough technical info to know what this means, so take the suggestion for what it is worth. Do it at your own risk.

 

Joe Smith

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Well, my download went fine, but the install stops with the message that NX2 is already running... (not on my machine!).

 

The new features seem very attractive, but compared to other companies products (non-photographic), NIK Software is tremendously buggy. I'm using version 1.1 with 2gig of RAM to avoid instability, but geez, a new version that won't even install?? Amazing.

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Ver. 2.0 is brilliant. On my computer, it is stable, fast, allows me to operate with up to

20 images open at the same time (without stalling!) and includes a much better

browser than what existed in previous Capture versions. I am not sure if anything really

important is missing but it looks like after ten years of waiting, Capture finally has

become a complete application that can be used without bitching about it all the time.

 

I will be happy to pay for the upgrade.

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Matt: Thanks a bunch for the response. So it seems like I should try it out and will

undoubtedly upgrade. It's the only s/w I use these days - I think my copy of PS is CS aka

v8 and I'm not ready to plunk down THOSE megabucks to upgrade.

 

Again, I appreciate the info. - Joel

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