NX rocks, OK, now what?

[dennis lee]

It's probably quite honest for me to say that I have been avoiding Nikon NX for at least three reasons.

1) I have established a very nice workflow with Adobe Bridge in CS2 2) Nikon View kinda sucked 3)

There's money required.

 

Well, yet another recommendation for NX came my way, this time from Neil Swanson, and I decided to

try it. Well, it's hard for me to put into words how much better my RAW D2H files look in NX than they

do in CS2 Camera Raw. My adjustments are fewer, and the images simply look worlds better right out

of the box. Why can't CS2 do this?

 

So finally my pictures look like they're supposed to when processed with NX, but now what? My

workflow is editing intensive, I need to be able to examine a picture large without opening it in the

finder. Bridge does this with it's Preview pallete. If NX has a slide show to go through pictures it's so

far hidden to me.

The labeling criteria is weak and without keyboard assistance, slow at best. Why are the NX adjustment

palletes so small? ooops, back to the point. Wait one more thing, I can't believe the thumbnails can't

get any bigger in the browser.

 

If I adjust an NEF in NX and then open it in Bridge none of the adjustments are visible and I'm back to

the brown, dull, flat, time consuming NEFs I normally begin with in Camera Raw. If I convert the NX file

to a .tif and save it, and then view it in Bridge, well, it looks fine but wow, who's got that kind of time.

 

I need to go through hundreds (usually over a thousand) images from an event, edit them, adjust them,

and produce a batch for proofs (I like to make these from the adjusted RAW files -- I don't always make

perfect exposures). This is very time consuming as you can imagine.

 

How do I incorporate the advantages of NX with Adobe Bridge?

 

One more thing, when I open my NEF files from NX in Photoshop (CS2) they are converted to .tif

automatically, which is fine, but they lose a fair bit of their punch (color). Anyone else experience this?

 

Has anybody tried Aperture? I guess that should really be; Has anyone owning a D2H tried Aperture?

 

I certainly have to buy NX, it's too good not too. Maybe things will get better as I get further along in

the instruction manual.

 

thanks for reading the ramblings and any comments. Dennis

[dennis lee]

I'm going to answer my own question. Make an initial edit in Bridge. Create a subfolder

with those images. Process those images in NX using 'Batch' as much as possible. Save a

set as JPGs for proofs and re-edit that group if necessary.

 

I still can't keep good RAW files in Bridge though. You can't make a .DNG from a .TIF can

you?

 

Maybe I don't need to keep RAW files in Bridge if I create a set of .TIFs for Bridge. In case

your wondering why Bridge is so important to me... it allows me to burn a DVD or series of

them of a complete event take, and with the exported .xmp cache on the DVD, reloading

for future viewing is almost instantaneous. Of course you want the highest resolution

stored here also. Who wants to save a set of .TIFs for viewing and then another set of the

original RAWs for premium data. That doesn't work, so I'm back to my original question.

 

How do I incorporate the advantages of NX with Adobe Bridge? Is there a difference

between TIF and RAW, there's gotta be right?

[dannyv]

I've noticed the same thing already with Nikon Capture.With Capture in NEF it's easier to adjust your pictures and it gives much nicer colours than CS2.

 

I have NX running on my PC too but still prefer to use Capture because NX still needs some tuning and some updates before it will work as smooth as Capture.Have fun with NX!

[shineofleo]

Sigh, my laptop can handle NC earlier version well, but the NX is really slow on it....

[neil_swanson]

Dennis I use PhotoMechanic for editing vs Nikon View or Bridge. It is so fast you won't believe it till you use it. They have a free demo at www.camerabits.com Download/copy/move/extract jpgs from NEFs in the time it takes Nikon View to even open itself. Download to 2 HD's at once. Zoom backup done. Very well worth it for someone who has to deal with editing several hundred images quickly.

[kaiyen]

It seems like workflow vs. RAW converter quality issues are coming up a lot more lately, especially with the introduction of Aperture and the betas of Lightroom. I am personally very torn on this. Working in Lightroom is quite nice, and I love that the RAW file is preserved. But it is not the best converter out there.

 

argh.

 

allan

[jheimsch]

I use Rawshooter to preview my .nef files before working on them in NX. I use the slide show feature flag the keepers and delete the rest. The overall picture quality in Rawshooter is not up to scratch particularly the as loaded white balance, but I am just checking composition, relative exposure and general sharpness. Once I have those selected I do the adjustment in NX. That has spead up my workflow alot.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Justin