Capture NX and other post processing S/W

[james_kennedy9]

<p>I searched photo.net for a comparison of Capture NX and Lightroom and the latest discussions I could find were two years old.</p>

<p>I have the latest version of Capture NX2, and have just installed Lightroom 3, beta 2 version. I also have Photoshop CS, whatever the latest version of Paint Shop Pro is now called, plus Picasa 3.5 (Don't laugh; when my wife and daughter came back from Paris recently with over 500 jpg's from good quality P&Ss, I turned to Picasa mainly for cropping, correcting my wife's consistent 10 degrees off vertical, fill lighting, and "I'm feel lucky", and Costco for prints).</p>

<p>The PSP version I got for $60 online as an upgrade, and I like its interface better than photoshop.</p>

<p>I really do not enjoy post processing very much, but I do realize that virtually all digital photos need it. I am still learning Capture NX, and I just added Lightroom a couple of days ago.</p>

<p>My question is do I really need more than one S/W package for processing NEFs from my D300 and D90? One would think that Capture NX would be the best for developing the raw image, but can it do all the perspective stuff, needed when you are pointing the camera up when shooting a tall building, etc?</p>

<p>What does Lightroom bring to the table?</p>

<p>I am not a total Luddite. I was a software and avionics engineer on the B-1B bomber and F-22 Stealth fighter, but that kind of software has little in common with photo post processing. I don't worry about accidently releasing a nuclear weapon in post processing, but maybe I should.</p>

<p>I may not have phrased my concerns in the best way, but I just want a less pain and better results in post processing. I would just as soon avoid paying the $300 for the official version of Lightroom and put that $$$ towards a lens or other hardware. </p>

<p>I have many reasons to be grateful for the advice I have received on this forum and Shun is on a par with Thom Hogan.</p>

<p> </p>

[Jerry_]

<p>If you want simple perspective (un-tilting the buildings) correction, you could look into Photoshop Elements. It works good with .jpg images...and TIF images, which Nikon Capture NX2 can output from a NEF file. </p>

<p>[**I used to be an enlisted Air Force historian, assigned to a couple of aircraft wings (bomb and fighter,) and know little about avionics -- but a lot about computers.]</p>

<p> </p>

[richardsnow]

<p>I would say that Lightroom is my favorite software to use. I am using it in conjunction with Capture NX and Photoshop CS3.</p>

<p>Depending on my needs, I may only use Lightroom or NX...on the other hand, if I need serious post processing, my only solution is Photoshop.</p>

<p>It's really up to you for what you need to do in post. If you shoot exclusively RAW, I'd invest in NX as it really is the best RAW processing tool for Nikon. It's also very simple to set up batch processing in NX. Once everything is batched out in NX, I move to LR for quick browsing, cropping, and minor dodging/burning. All this can be done in LR3b2. If I need scene reconstruction, major processing, or special effects, I move into Photoshop. </p>

<p>Regards,<br>

RS</p>

[michael_shi1]

<p>It really depends on how many images you normally shoot and process each week. If you don't shoot more than 250 a week, you should be fine without LR. NX2 is Nikon's native raw converter but its performance is terrible at least on my machines.</p>

[oskar_ojala]

<p>In brief, Capture NX2 does produce very high quality output when used correctly to convert NEF to TIFF (or JPEGs for that matter, but TIFF is a nice intermediate step since it allows for adjustments if needed). It is, however, a slow, resource hungry and buggy piece of software, many options being a royal PITA to use either due to to the interface not going the last mile or slowness causing previews to take too long.<br>

Lightroom (which uses the same engine as Photoshop, BTW) is a wonderfully fast program, great for doing lots of edits on many images. Say you want to correct WB for 500 images? No problem. Output those to JPEG quickly? Again no problem. However, Lightroom has not done an equally good job as Capture on RAW conversion particularly for high ISO images, but there's a new conversion engine in LR3, so the situation might change.<br>

Bottom line: if you process a few images or can operate fully in batch mode without any adjustment, then Capture NX2 is ok (although you can just as well have the camera produce JPEG files along raw files if you just need some unprocessed JPEGs). If you want to have any semblance of volume processing, Lightroom is great.<br>

Photoshop is then for the heavy lifting, i.e. you want to do extensive edits, local edits etc. to an image.<br>

Note that I don't use Lightroom; I have tried it seriously but I don't use it since Adobe's pricing is totally ridiculous in my country (e.g. more than twice the US price for PS).<br>

BTW, nice to see people with all sorts of SW backgrounds. In the last few years I've worked with making software to make software, which is kind of interesting to explain to laymen :-)</p>

[kevin_delson]

<p>http://www.photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00WJrV</p>

<p>This seems to be a re-wording of the other question you posted.</p>

[jim mucklin]

<p>James, I wish I had your problems, I have spent the last two months researching lightroom and NX2. I have worked with ps since 6 and do a lot of heavy lifting with it, I shoot events and do a couple hundred photos per weekend.<br>

Where I found the most help:<br>

Lightroom, Julieann Kost <a href="http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html"></a>tutorials<br>

Capture NX2 , on utube type in NX2 and check out jcampbells videos.</p>