D700 raw workflow question

[miklosphoto]

I hope my question won't sound dumb for many of you, but I am a new Nikon convert (after almost 10 years of

Canon experience) due to one simple reason: D700.

And here comes my first cultural shock. After the smooth and friendly Canon - Adobe raw cooperation I faced the a

big drawback when trying to apply the same - very simple - workflow to my NEF files from D700 what I used for CR2

from the EOS cameras. That is, import them to Lightroom and DONE. I used then CS3 to do some post-processing,

mainly applying Color Efex or AlienSkin filters to my images.

I realized that my NEF files are not processed by Lightroom the same way, I must say they just do not look good

in terms of sharpness, saturation, tonal range. I tried the trial version of Capture NX which came with my D700.

Now, there the conversion is what I would expect from D700, images are perfect.

But, even I would not mind to buy the license for the Capture NX, if it was a good software in general, but I

think it sucks. It is very slow and not even close in features to Lightroom.

Could you guys share your 'best practices'?

Here are the things I am not willing to do: shoot jpg, give up LR, give up D700 (-:

Any idea, advice, help is very much appreciated.

thanks

Miklos

[nina_myers]

I recently looked this up.

 

Check out these lightroom presets.

 

http://80.196.252.2/downloads/public_index

 

I know they're not for the D700, but the D300 ones look very much like the in-camera settings, and the D200/D2x

ones are extremely useful as well.

 

Some other links to keep you busy.

 

http://makeanimage.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-d300-lightroom-preset.html

 

here is the flickr thread about it (if you have a flickr account)

 

http://www.flickr.com/groups/adobe_lightroom/discuss/72157603918918331/#comment72157603944613887

 

enjoy!

[photo5]

Nikon offers a free 60 day trial for Capture NX2. I'd give it a try. I think for converting RAW files, it's still the best bet.

[benny_spinoza]

Just curious...does anyone use Capture from Phase One as their RAW converter for Nikon? Their software looks really slick.

[joseph_smith3]

I agree with Dave.

 

Plus what does Lightroom cost vs Capture NX2? (The programs do not do the same things.) Many Nikon shooters have and use both. And are you on a pc or a mac? How much RAM do you have on your pc? And what cache settings have you made to use capture nx2 properly and optimally?

 

 

Check out this pc tutorial to see if you pc has what it needs for Capture NX:

http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=176373

 

Right now Capture NX2 does 99.9% of my work for me--raw processing thru printing.

I use PS 7 to add my copyright to my prints. U point technology is wonderful and it is free with Capture. You can buy it as a plug in for PS CS3 for over $200. I forget what NIK software calls it.

 

That being said, if you know how to use Lightroom and already own it, they use it.

 

Joe Smith

[miklosphoto]

Joe,

I have been using LR since it came out and I like it very much. As I said it is not the fact that I would need to

buy another software what bothers me. It is that I have a state of art - I believe the best on the market -

software which has only one flaw, it can't interpret a file coming from a state of art camera.

Dave did not read my post obviously, where I said that had installed and used NX2 for a while now.

I use a MacBook Pro with all the computing power required by NX2, it is way slower than LR.

Anyway, my question is whether someone successfully integrated NEF with LR and how?

If the answer is that it won't be ever as good as the NX2's NEF conversion I will accept that too and live with

that. And will hope that a future upgrade to LR will fix that. I think Adobe should be smart enough to fully

serve not only the Canon users but the Nikonians as well.

Miklos

[ellis_vener_photography]

read this:

 

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/08/the_dng_profile_editor.html

[mark_sirota1]

<i>I realized that my NEF files are not processed by Lightroom the same way, I must say they just do not look good in terms of sharpness, saturation, tonal range.</i>

<p>

Then what you want are the <a href="http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles">DNG Profiles from Adobe Labs</a>.

<p>

These are designed to mimic the profiles available in-camera and in Nikon's software. If you choose one of these profiles as your default in Lightroom, suddenly you'll find your Lightroom images looking quite a lot like those from Capture NX.

<p>

The same thing applies to Canon -- however, Canon's profiles were a lot closer to Adobe's than Nikon's were, so the difference wasn't as noticable or objectionable.

[photo5]

Surely Lightroom is no better than Adobe Camera Raw?

[ontheoffchance]

I'll be one to agree that NX2 is too slow. I've tried to adjust cache settings and also upgraded my memory which slightly helped by not

crashing as often. Nikon really should fix the speed problem and offer a free upgrade. I found Lightroom a week after I purchased NX2 and

found it was much faster like I'd expect NX2 to be. Not to say those who use NX2 are crazy but its not for me. If I use NX2 for jpg images

it works fine but with large Raw files it doesn't respond. Using levels or any other tool it takes 20 seconds for the program to respond. I

have 1.5 gigs of memory and upped my cache setting and still no help. Lightroom handles the same files effortlessly. Its got to be the

program.

[tuyen_tran]

I have the same problem as Miklos. I don't have any problem with spending money on NX2; it's just the clumsy third rate UI that is the

issue (YMMV, IMHO, and all the other usual disclaimers when discussing religious issues). I've taken to revealing the file in the Finder,

and then launching NX2 on the NEF, and then saving it back out as TIFF into a directory that LR is watching, where upon it gets

automatically reimported into LR. I'm gritting my teeth the whole time, so obviously this is not a long term solution. I do all this basically

to avoid LR's noise reduction from kicking in.

 

Compare the raw converters NX2, Raw Developer, and LR -- I much prefer how NX2 handles grain with Raw Developer a close second,

and LR a distance third. I wish Nikon and Adobe would make nice; I'd pay them both handsomely for a version of LR that incorporated

NX2's raw converter.

[hawkman]

<p>Miklos,<br>

The best quality for D700 NEF files can be achieved with NC NX2, by using the DNG converter and modifying your work flow parameters you can get close to Capture output but I for one never succeeded in creating Nikon Capture colors and smooth tones with ACR/light room so I gave it up. That said even for Canon Adobe was not the best converter not matching the output from Canon's own DPP in terms of sharpness which I have been using in the past 5 years for my Canon bodies. <br>

Nikon Capture NX2.0 has a rather flimsy interface with too many nested and docking menus but it has most of the features you need and in some case it can do things that lightroom does not, for example it offers more accurate white balance correction and it can corrects CA like no other tool, it also handles highlights much better, I have found that ACR often clips the highlight edges very harshly. Regarding the performance you need a fast computer to get Nikon Capture properly, you need at least 4GB of RAM with a modern Quad Core Intel CPU and preferably a RAID0 disk setup, on my machine it takes no more than one sec to convert each D700 14Bit RAW file, about 2 seconds if I apply noise reduction so it is not very slow. I think the best way is to try to setup your work flow with Nikon Capture for batch processing and see how you like it. If you are not satisfied then you can resort to fiddling with lightroom parameters in order to match NX2 output. </p>

[miklosphoto]

<p>Hi Arash,<br>

yes I have had the same experience since my original post. I basically decided to buy the NX2 licence and using it for every image I print/post. I still use LR to get the images from the memory cards becuse there I can sort/filter/trash much faster. Once I had the images sorted out I do the raw conversion for the keepers in NX2.<br>

Unfortunately I have a two years old MacBook Pro with only 2.3GB RAM which could be upgraded only to 3GB. So I just live with it till my next computer upgrade (not soon - as I heavily invested in Nikkor glass since my I converted to Nikon).<br>

Thank you for the usefull post, it confirmed my own findings that NX2 is the best NEF converter.<br>

Miklos</p>