The knub of this 'rant' is that as a Nikon user I used to love Raw Shooter essentials, so user friendly and perfect once you had got used to it, I miss it immensly.
I now have the D3 and have to use Nikon Capture NX...it's like having to learn about a totally new Photoshop programme all over again, I should live so long !
Why did Nikon have to make it so complicated ?? I bought a book "Capture NX" by Ben Long, sorry Ben but this book is just as user unfriendly.
I have given up now and use Capture simply to convert raws to Tiffs and then bang em into PS.
I do wish someone would come up with a raw shooter type programme for the D3.
Capture One 4 (v 4.1) does indeed support the D3. NX2 can produce an excellent conversion, but it's an exceedingly painful process IMO.
I've done some head to head comparisons of NX2, ACR, and Capture One 4 (C4). Of the three I prefer Capture One 4 by a large margin, although it was pretty close between NX2 and C4 on a straight conversion comparison. I did 10 head to head comparisons overall. On six I preferred C4, on four I preferred NX2, and preferred ACR on none. However, on a realistic basis there wasn't a tremendous difference between all three. All do an excellent job. To find consistent differences I needed the enlarge images to 250% to find areas where color was a little washed out, sharpness suffered SLIGHTLY (no sharpness added), etc. In the end I chose to use C4 as my main RAW converter because it is BY FAR the most user friendly, has very nimble controls, excellent color, excellent noise reduction (which I use in conjunction with Noise Ninja for severe noise), excellent shadow/highlight tool (better than ACR or CS3 IMO). C4 also supports the colorspace I use (Joseph Holmes Dcam3). NX2 also supports this colorspace as well, but ACR does not, a large disadvantage for me. I would still put ACR in 2nd place though, and NX2 a distant third because NX2 is irritatingly slow, very cumbersone and unwieldly, non-intuitive, and poorly laid out. I found the white balance control to be of especially poor design and a near total waste of time. The end product of NX2 can be impressive, but the workflow is so poor and unnatural as to be a hugh disappointment. I still suffer through NX2 on occasion if I have an especially flat image because it does seem to do a better job when the contrast is poor. In comparison, C4 does a much better job IMO than either NX2 or ACR on high contrast images. Hope this helps.
Colin - You might also want to try to use Raw Therapee...I think it's pretty straightforward (not knowing anything about what Capture NX is like), and supports the D3. Plus it's free, so there's not much to lose other than a little time...
Posted by Bill Chambers on July 31, 2008 at 10:53 AM
Colin, both will require a learning curve of course, but after that learning process I would say C4 is exceedingly fast as compared to NX2. With C4, if you're slow it will be your fault not the program, whereas in NX2 you spend a lot of time actually waiting on the program to process your request, which is inexcusable IMO. C4 is not perfect mind you. With the "upgrade" from v. 3.78 to v. 4.1 they actually went backwards in some areas, but hopefully they will slowly overcome those issues as they update the program. All in all, C4 is the best RAW converter I've tried.
To get back to your question - my workflow goes very quickly. I don't make a lot of image changes in my RAW converter so that may be part of the reason. My "normal" workflow is as follows:
1. Choose the image I want to work on.
2. Rough crop and straighten horizon if necessary.
3. Set WB
4. Make any necessary adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadow/highlight, and set curves.
5. Adjust for capture sharpening and adjust noise level if necessary
6. Process (opens automatically in CS3)
The entire process seldom takes over 2-3 minutes.
EDIT - I forgot to mention, you can download a trial version of C4 as well. One bad thing about C4 is that their Tech Support is not the best in the world, but generally you will eventually get satisfaction out of them. They also have a User Forum you can go to to get answers, etc. User Forum is down currently as they're re-doing it. Should be back up by the middle of August I believe.
Posted by Colin Smale on July 31, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Thanx guys, I think I will download a trial version of C4 and take a look at Raw Therapee too.
If you are an Apple user I highly recommend Aperture. I use Aperture as the hub of my workflow for all my professional work and find that it makes extremely good RAW conversions from both my D2s and D3s. 30 day trial version can be downloaded from the Apple site. Conversions are also extremely rapid
Discussion
9 repliesI now have the D3 and have to use Nikon Capture NX...it's like having to learn about a totally new Photoshop programme all over again, I should live so long !
Why did Nikon have to make it so complicated ?? I bought a book "Capture NX" by Ben Long, sorry Ben but this book is just as user unfriendly.
I have given up now and use Capture simply to convert raws to Tiffs and then bang em into PS.
I do wish someone would come up with a raw shooter type programme for the D3.
I've done some head to head comparisons of NX2, ACR, and Capture One 4 (C4). Of the three I prefer Capture One 4 by a large margin, although it was pretty close between NX2 and C4 on a straight conversion comparison. I did 10 head to head comparisons overall. On six I preferred C4, on four I preferred NX2, and preferred ACR on none. However, on a realistic basis there wasn't a tremendous difference between all three. All do an excellent job. To find consistent differences I needed the enlarge images to 250% to find areas where color was a little washed out, sharpness suffered SLIGHTLY (no sharpness added), etc. In the end I chose to use C4 as my main RAW converter because it is BY FAR the most user friendly, has very nimble controls, excellent color, excellent noise reduction (which I use in conjunction with Noise Ninja for severe noise), excellent shadow/highlight tool (better than ACR or CS3 IMO). C4 also supports the colorspace I use (Joseph Holmes Dcam3). NX2 also supports this colorspace as well, but ACR does not, a large disadvantage for me. I would still put ACR in 2nd place though, and NX2 a distant third because NX2 is irritatingly slow, very cumbersone and unwieldly, non-intuitive, and poorly laid out. I found the white balance control to be of especially poor design and a near total waste of time. The end product of NX2 can be impressive, but the workflow is so poor and unnatural as to be a hugh disappointment. I still suffer through NX2 on occasion if I have an especially flat image because it does seem to do a better job when the contrast is poor. In comparison, C4 does a much better job IMO than either NX2 or ACR on high contrast images. Hope this helps.
To get back to your question - my workflow goes very quickly. I don't make a lot of image changes in my RAW converter so that may be part of the reason. My "normal" workflow is as follows:
1. Choose the image I want to work on.
2. Rough crop and straighten horizon if necessary.
3. Set WB
4. Make any necessary adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadow/highlight, and set curves.
5. Adjust for capture sharpening and adjust noise level if necessary
6. Process (opens automatically in CS3)
The entire process seldom takes over 2-3 minutes.
EDIT - I forgot to mention, you can download a trial version of C4 as well. One bad thing about C4 is that their Tech Support is not the best in the world, but generally you will eventually get satisfaction out of them. They also have a User Forum you can go to to get answers, etc. User Forum is down currently as they're re-doing it. Should be back up by the middle of August I believe.
If you are an Apple user I highly recommend Aperture. I use Aperture as the hub of my workflow for all my professional work and find that it makes extremely good RAW conversions from both my D2s and D3s. 30 day trial version can be downloaded from the Apple site. Conversions are also extremely rapid
Peter