Maulik Patel

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The new Workspaces option in NX 2 can configure its numerous panels and display options in various configurations. Other Nikon NX Studio features resulted in slow response times or outright crashes. The new Workspaces option in NX 2 can configure its numerous panels and display options in various configurations. A 12 MB file gets shrunk to about 1. This part of the RAW file is never overwritten. Finally figured out what happened. Dec 3, Remember, the Crop Tool does not resize your image.❿
 
 

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Nikon capture nx 2 test free.Nikon NX Studio pros

 

In , Nikon released a software tool called Capture NX, which was designed for its fledgling line of digital cameras. Over the years, Nikon slowly added new features, but Capture NX was never a serious competitor to Adobe Lightroom , Capture One , or other popular image editing and management software. What exactly does NX Studio do and who is it for? The answers might surprise you.

The two have a lot of overlap, but when doing a one-to-one feature comparison, Nikon NX Studio comes up woefully short. However, NX Studio does have a workflow that appeals to a lot of photographers, as well as some advanced tools absent from Lightroom. Nikon NX Studio is great for photographers who want to do more with their photos than what basic programs like Apple Photos can offer.

It has tools for common edits such as white balance, brightness, color, noise reduction, cropping, and sharpness. Nikon NX Studio also goes one step beyond Lightroom by letting you perform basic edits on videos, such as trimming and stitching. But where Nikon NX Studio really shines is in the sheer depth of its tools. The Lightness, Chroma, and Hue adjustments give you incredible control over editing colors, and the Color Point tool gives you fine-grained control that takes several steps to replicate in Lightroom.

You really have nothing to lose by trying it, and you might find that the results you get from your Nikon RAW files are much better than what you get in Lightroom. The interface is pretty simple: the left side is where you access your photos in folders or albums.

The middle is where you scroll through your photos or look at them more closely. Your tools are located on the right and clicking the title of a tool expands and collapses its options just like Lightroom. An Import button in the top-right corner will let you start loading images from a memory card. Along the bottom are more tools that let you show view overlays such as a grid or a histogram , assign star ratings, and rotate photos. One key difference between Nikon NX Studio and Lightroom is that the former stores your image edits in sidecar files, whereas the latter is based around a single massive database, called a catalog.

So, what I need is a good RAW-converter and a quick processing tool. I rely solely on Capture NX-D for my post processing work. You will, of course, want to use one of your own shots in the following process.

Like any other picture I take, it was shot in RAW to enable the highest picture quality and the most editing options. If you shoot jpegs, you are bound to lose a number of editing options. In this application I can easily I check picture data. The histogram part of which can be seen at bottom right is okay, there is no overexposure. Next, click on the White Balance symbol.

WB was Natural light auto, but as the car is sunlit, I chose Direct Sunlight no big difference, the camera gets it right. Portrait photographer Markus Hofstaetter knows a thing or two about capturing eyes of subjects.

For his latest project, however, he takes eyes to the extreme with super-close-up macro photos of irises, showing eyes in a new, alien-like light. When it comes to workflow, organization, and archiving years of accumulated photos and videos, everyone has their own system. DPReview’s Jason Hendardy highlights a few items that have worked for him throughout the years, while also asking our community to share their approaches and what’s been working for them.

Shotkit surveyed 1, amateur and professional photographers to see what cameras they used for professional and personal work. The results were interesting in more ways than one. For many film photographers, a light meter is a critical part of their kit. Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses. Now reading: Review: Nikon NX Studio answers our plea for a free, all-in-one editing app comments. Introduction Nikon NX Studio version 1.

Key takeaways: NX Studio comes with a modern, approachable UI Keywording and GPS tagging are now supported Allows for movie playback and light editing Image quality and performance are broadly similar to predecessors; convenience in a single package is the reason to upgrade A cleaner, friendlier, more modern user interface The user interface is aesthetically similar to that of both earlier apps, but it’s now cleaner, friendlier and more standards compliant than before.

Few and minor drawbacks to the new interface There are relatively few downsides to the new UI. You can’t undock panels any more, but you can customize the workspace with user-selected palettes to match your own workflow The navigation panel, folders and albums controls are all fixed at screen left, while the histogram, adjustments, EXIF information and keywording tools sit at the right of the screen.

Keyword your images manually or based on location Given that ViewNX-i had a rather abbreviated selection of editing controls, I’d wager most users will be migrating from Capture NX-D. View your images and track logs on the map Speaking of the map view, that’s another new addition, and it allows you to see geotagged images from your currently-selected folder or album on an interactive world map.

The new Map view can pinpoint the location and capture direction of individual photos, show GPS track logs and automatically geotag your images from the tracks. Play movies and perform basic editing tasks Another new addition is support for movies, both in terms of playback and basic editing.

You can now view and perform basic editing on movies in-app, but you’ll need a beefy processor and GPU if you want to do so with ultra high-def footage.

You can also play basic slideshows in-app, but there are only three transition types to choose from, and you’ll need to supply any background music yourself. Performance is similar to both predecessors As for performance, which was already a strong point of Nikon’s software compared to that provided by many manufacturers, things are also pretty similar to before. A few bugs, but that’s to be expected in a brand-new app In my time with Nikon NX Studio, I’ve found it to be very stable, but that’s not to say it’s perfect, nor would I expect a brand-new app to be.

Performance and image quality are very similar to those of its predecessors, and there are thankfully only a few minor bugs Firstly, there’s still an issue with detecting dragging of the right-panel scroll bar, regardless of whether the program is running maximized or not. Tags: review , nikon , software-review. View Comments Comments All HibikiTaisuna Any update on the keyboard shortcuts? Tetsujin28 No dual display support? JRPhotography1 Good new Software, but it needs refinement!

I’ll wait, while I’m continuing using C1. Bad Bokeh So far, it has crashed on my Win 10 PC several times, and it often refuses to actually execute things like Retouch. Not even close. AMD x 32gigs and nvme ssd. NikonMarlowe Hi. NikonMarlowe Update. Digital Tyke Yes but you cannot specify the required file type.

Janet Zinn yes I just discovered this and its a deal-breaker for me. RolMan Would not consider it a deal breaker, but agree that it complicates the workflow.

RolMan Another issue I found is noise reduction. AhjayPee Looked good for a couple of days but now constantly crashing my Windows 10 machine with ‘Page Fault in non-paged area’ – very disappointed :. Urbex Mark Anyone know of a way to have something similar to the Photo Tray with this new program?

Nukunukoo Using it, and colour me impressed! Urbex Mark So I notice the Photo tray is gone. GiovanniB Keywording look rather rudimentary. SwapM I like the Focus Points info.. James Grove Oh its also great to see that data and edits can be placed directly into the raw file rather than side car. James Grove Its actually really good, I am pretty impressed with it, much better than having separate software for separate tasks. Knallkopp Good to see this and great for Nikon owners who don’t want to pay for additional software.

Not sure. Regards, Philippe. JochenIs You can put the location information by clicking on the location on a map or you can use a gpx track and the software can automatically extract the location information for all images in the folder. JochenIs Ah my mistake then. NikonMan09 I would like to see the ability to add watermarks upon export in a future update in this program. MaxMoritz Unfortunately again not thought to the end: – do not display more than 4 images at the same time – no simultaneous resizing of the selected images in the viewer – no catalog for quick display with reduced image size like Media Pro.

PeterjmTim Thanks for another great review Mike. M Lammerse Silkypix is the only other soft which gives you the exact camera settings as in Capture Studio. Photog74 Can you make any localised edits via selections or brushes? Hazeyblue Yes to you question.

Download it and try, it’s free. Julian Well that was an interesting surprise Julian I rarely use photoshop though, I almost exclusively work in lightroom SdeGat May good points again munn1. Is photo work a real business for you BTW? Julian I installed NX studio over the weekend, and played with it a bit. Spectro if they just merge the 2, otherwise I will still use capture nx-d here and there. Per Vindis Very interesting.

AKH You can choose what you want. Hazeyblue It does. If so, this is awesome! Hazeyblue I use a custom Picture Set, based around Portrait – it recognises my settings.

It does a exceptional job. You can export directly to Photoshop and Other Applications. Herve J twomonts1 Thank you, I thought I couldn’t find it Stretchini Won’t install after two downloads. Running as admin.

Rick It’s free. What’s the problem? CAT Productions Nice surprise. You may also like. Nikon’s Q2 financials show better-than-expected revenue, profit for imaging division. Latest sample galleries. DJI Mini 3 sample gallery. Lighten: Applies the effect to areas of the image where the result is brighter than the original image Screen: increases the pixel values of the resulting Us the Blending Mode menu to choose one of six blending modes.

Tonal values above neutral are lightened, tonal values below are darkened. Tonal values of exactly are left alone. Multiply: subtracts the tonal value of the effect to create a darkened final image Darken: the effect is only applied in areas where the With RGB mode, you can selectively apply the effects to any result darkens the image. Other opacity options You can choose to apply the Opacity effect in all channels default , or in individual color channels RGB , or you can apply the effect in the luminosity brightness and chrominance color channels.

All told, the opacity and blending modes offer a significant amount of flexibility for applying effects in Edit Steps. However, there are a few instances where you might want to take advantage of some of the other tools for adjusting global brightness, contrast, and color balance. Again, it all depends on the feeling you are trying to convey with your image. Central to getting image contrast set correctly is the concept of defining the black and white points in your image.

The image will turn gray. The double threshold tool allows you to see anywhere in your image that has a tonal value of 0 black or white. Everything in between those values is rendered gray.

Black threshold slider White threshold slider White areas are the lightest points in your image. Black areas are the darkest points in your image. An easy way of setting the black point on your image is to use a Black Control Point.

The Black Control Point allows you to set the darkest pixel value in your image, but it also gives you control over luminosity brightness. The Black Control Point will also remove color casts from shadow areas. This is especially useful for portraits. The Black Control Point will be visible in the image. White Control Points not only establish the lightest point in your image, but they also remove unwanted color casts.

What about the Neutral Control Point? It can be useful in JPEGs if you have a neutral gray object in the frame. That means that color shifts can occur Midtone slider when using this tool, making it useful for White threshold slider correcting color casts. The histogram will show only the data from the selected color channel. An anchor point will be placed on the curve. The Anchor Point Tool lets you click on your image to place a point on the curve that corresponds to the selected tonal value.

You can also use this technique with the LCH editor if you want to only affect luminosity brightness data and protect the color data. Notice how the curves changed for each of the three color channels. Left: Contrast and color balance were adjusted with Auto Contrast. Right: Contrast was adjusted but color balance was left unchanged. Fortunately, you can use the Auto Levels tool to apply automatic levels and color balance correction to each image in a batch job.

Slide the sliders to the left to reduce the effect; slide the slider to the right to increase the effect. Top: Default settings. Bottom: Custom settings. Use it to control luminance and color. Simply put, this adjustment tool allows you to control Brightness and Contrast lightness , Saturation chroma , and Hue– all in one step. A unique aspect of the LCH editor is that it separates out luminance brightness information from chrominance color information. All the same icons are there– including the Levels sliders reset icons and the Auto Contrast icon.

The LCH window changes from the image histogram to something more akin to a color spectrum. Want to darken a blue sky? Click the line where the blues are and drag the point downward. Want lighter reds? Click the line in the red part of the spectrum to add an anchor point and drag it upward. The resulting curve shows you which colors are affected by your adjustment. In the example above, yellows and your image and modify light greens are made lighter by dragging an anchor point upward on the curve.

I probably use this option the most to make saturation adjustments to Anchor Point Tool specific color ranges. In fact, you use this Master chroma editor in exactly the adjustment same way as the color lightness editor, but now you also have the option to increase or decrease saturation of any point on the entire color spectrum.

In this example, 4 Use Anchor Point greens are boosted and blues are desaturated. The LCH editor can help solve this problem by protecting skin tones from becoming oversaturated. Anchor Point tool But, if you want to make selective adjustments to the hue in your image, this is the place to do it.

As with the Master Hue adjustment chroma editor, you can make overall hue changes or limit Hue Map them to certain colors. Rotation tool Moving the curve maps a color from the baseline value to the new point on the spectrum. Essentially obsolete with the advent of Highlight and Shadow Protection Sliders in Quick Fix, but can be applied in an Edit Step if desired, or if local application is needed.

Color Balance Basic controls for adjusting brightness, contrast, and color in an Edit Step. Most often used during soft-proofing to make global changes to color balance.

Color Booster Allows you to increase saturation globally in a way that is not overpowering. For example, how many times have you struggled to make an adjustment because correcting one part of your image ended up making other parts of your image look worse?

Local adjustments are effects applied to certain parts of your image while leaving other parts alone. Both methods are valuable and have their own specific strengths and weaknesses. By creating selections in Edit Steps, it means you can transform every effect in Capture NX2 from a global one to a local one.

The ramifications of this transformation are huge. Need to brighten a face? Use a local adjustment. Capture NX2 selection tools make it possible to create special effects or simply make improvements to your image that you might otherwise have to do in another application. By staying in Capture NX2, you can, in many cases, keep your image in the NEF format from camera to print and save time otherwise spent switching between editing applications.

Note the opacity slider underneath the toolbar. You should see the entire image turn green. Using the fill tool selects the entire image; the green color is the mask view 5 Select the Remove Tool showing the selected area. The green fill is removed. The Marquee and Lasso tools in Capture NX2 work a little differently than those you might be familiar with.

These tools alone do not define a selection, per se. Use the lasso to make free-form selections; the various Marquee tools are used to create defined shapes. Creating a Selection with the Lasso or Marquee. The selected area will be filled in green, showing that it is now an actively selected area. The fill is applied outside your selected area.

The green mask is removed from the area defined by the lasso. You can modify lasso selections by holding down the shift key add or option while using the lasso tool. This represents the area affected by the selection.

When you choose an adjustment to place in the Edit Step, the mask view will disappear. There are three ways to view Edit Steps that have selections applied to them: Hide Selection: Selection mask is not shown, showing you the image as it would appear normally with the effect applied. Tip: You can toggle the different views by right-clicking the mouse in the image Clockwise from top right: Hide Selection view, Show Overlay, Show Mask.

Edit window and choosing the view you want to use. Selection created with the lasso tool only. Selection created with the lasso tool bright green and Base Mask applied. One of the most straightforward selection tools is the Selection Brush. Use these options to set the brush size, softness, and opacity. The effect of Brush Hardness is illustrated in this selection view. Tip: Keyboard Shortcuts There are numerous keyboard shortcuts in Capture NX2, but the Selection Brush tool is a good example of where they come in handy.

The gradient tools define selections on their own. New in Capture NX2 is a radial circular gradient tool to go along with the linear gradient tool. The gradient tool helps blend your effect so that it appears natural. Slide the transition point to define the length of the transition zone. The Show Mask view inset shows the selected area in white.

Note that the effect is not applied in a hard circle! Left: Image showing the effect of a minus Selection Control Point. For example, you might want to apply a selection to a large expanse of sky. To match settings between Selection Control Points, use the Duplicate command. With a two-button mouse, you can use the contextual menu by right-clicking on the Control Point.

Drag the new Control Point to where you want to place it in the image right. Show Mask view shows the effect of the two Selection Control Points; the selected area is in white. This is how the tools interact with each other. The Base Mask cannot be applied until a selection tool is added to the Edit Step. Base Mask has Selection Control Point added.

Base Mask added– overridden by Selection Control Point. You can link multiple adjustments into a single Edit Step. This technique is very handy with local adjustments if you want to apply more than one effect to the same selection area. A common trick in the field to even out high-contrast scenes was to use a graduated neutral-density filter. The overlay view will disappear. In this image, the sky and mountains can be darkened. After you created the Dodge and Burn tools on the previous page, you might want to use the same effect on other images.

Rather than manually adjusting the Edit Steps each time, it is a tremendous time saver to create a Settings File of your Edit Step s and apply it using the Batch tool. This is the only step you want to save. When you are finished, the new setting will be stored in the batch settings list under the Batch icon. Make sure that only item checked in the Save Adjustments dialog is the setting you want to save. The Control Point approach to making selections is fast and intuitive.

Creating a selection that would normally require several minutes or more of mask work in Photoshop can be done with a single mouse click in Capture NX2 using a Control Point. Color Control Points and Selection Control Points both use the same technology, and so both create selections in the same way.

The difference between these two tools is that while Selection Control Points simply define a selection in an Edit Step, Color Control Points have a suite of tools built into them for adjusting local color, brightness, and contrast. A simple rule is that if you are making adjustments to light and color that require a complex selection, Color Control Points should be your first choice. One last thing about Control Points: not every image needs them, and those that do often only need a small number of Control Points.

It can be very tempting to start adding Control Points in all your images. Remember, sometimes less is more. Each slider controls a different adjustment parameter. The most commonly used controls are the Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation sliders, which are visible by default. Selected areas are shown in white. The main slider attached to a Control Point adjusts the size of the effect. The size slider determines the relative distance from the control point that the effect is spread over.

This will give you a feel for how the tool is making selections. Put the control point on a diverse area of the image, and the selection changes dramatically. Notice how the moon top was not selected, as it did not match the pixel information in the sky.

You can add more than one Color Control Point to your image, but it is important to know how multiple Control Points interact. When you place two Control Points in the same Edit Step, they will act to cancel each other out in areas of overlap. This property of Control Points is actually quite useful. Notice that the face turns black. If you want to create additive effects with multiple Color Control Points where effects are not cancelled out , then use separate Edit Steps A second Color Control Point placed on the face chooses the skin tones, and for your Control Points.

Then the effects will overlap. Control Point behaves as though all its sliders are set to zero. While you cannot add to the area selected by a Color Control point, you can use the minus brush to remove the effect from parts of your image.

These are the protected areas that the Color Control Point can no longer affect. Rather than adding another Color Control Point and trying to manually adjust each slider to match the settings of the original point, you can use the Duplicate command to make exact copies of your Control Points. Place a Color Control Point on your image and adjust the sliders to your liking.

As an alternative, you can right- click on the Control Point and choose the Duplicate command from the contextual menus. Move the duplicate point to where you want to place it in the image bottom. Color Control Points are my go-to tool to recover shadow detail in photos taken of people wearing baseball caps where the face is in the shadows.

The best part about using a Control Point for this effect is that it looks totally natural when applied correctly– and it is ridiculously easy to apply it correctly. The unfilled circle on the triangle represents the current color of your control point. Turn the wheel to adjust hue, or place the dot wherever you want in the triangle. You can use the eyedropper icon to pick out a color point from anywhere on your image. Click the eyedropper icon and then click an area on your image that has the color you desire.

It is very easy to get unnatural looking results. Click and drag the edge of the color The eyedropper icon lets you pick a wheel to change hue. Opening the Swatches Panel gives you access to commonly used colors. No longer do you need to use a separate pixel editor program to edit your image simply because of a dust spot.

The Red Eye Control Point is used to remove the red-eye effect sometimes seen in indoor flash photos. Of course, not all my images will need these tools, but it is nice to know that they are there when the situation presents itself. It makes removing dust spots absolutely painless. Auto Retouch Brush in 1 Open the image action Notice the dust spots in this image.

Adjust the size of the Auto Retouch Brush using either the size slider that appears beneath the toolbar, or by After Auto Retouch Brush using the keyboard shortcuts [ or ]. Repeat for additional dust spots, offending seagulls, or anything else that is small and distracting. Tip: Keep your sensor clean One way to get rid of dust spots is to have a clean sensor. I recommend the Copper Hill method.

Before We all have shots where our subject looks like the devil with red eyes. Use them in the situations where they are warranted. Obviously, if your horizon is level in the image then using the straighten tool makes little sense.

Use the Straighten tool to correct tilted images. Drag the Straighten Tool across the horizon line or other reference point. Some lenses, especially super-zoom lenses and wide-angle lenses, will produce images with slight distortions. You can use the Distortion Control Tool in Capture NX2 to correct distortions in your images caused by lens aberrations. Note that white areas appear around the image.

You can change the fill color using the Fill color tool in the Edit Step. Drag the slider to the right to correct barrel distortion. One way to use the Crop Tool is to help improve your compositions. Remember, the Crop Tool does not resize your image. Use constrained cropping to maintain a particular aspect ratio for your image. Use the in your image. As anchor points on the corners and sides of the crop frame to resize it.

Click the Enter key on your keyboard or double- click inside the crop area to set the crop. You can remove a crop at any time by deleting the crop step from the Edit List. You can do a ton and never fire up Photoshop, but you’ll get much more amazing results.

Capture NX2 is great for what it is, but it’s kinda like comparing Microsoft Works to Microsoft Office – it “works”, but just barely. Ron, Thanks, I will take a closer look at Lightroom.

I noticed from many of you images on your site you seem to use a lot of the NIK products. Do you use these in conjunction with other products LR or more as stand alone products? I am trying to find the best combination of solutions for something I can afford, or purchase as I go. Every dollar on software is one less spent on hardware such as a good Micro.

Thanks, Mike. Nik Software products are the key component of my digital workflow. I use them as Lightroom plug-ins for light work although you can do some pretty amazing stuff with Viveza 2 , but more often I use them in Photoshop for one primary reason – so I can use the “brush” feature which basically creates a mask so I can control where the effect is applied and where it isn’t.

Technically you can use U-Point controls do to the same thing, but it can be tricky if you want to do something like apply heavy sharpening on eyebrows without applying it to the face.

It’s possible with U-Point, but perhaps not as efficent. Ron, I’m considering the purchase either of Lightroom or NX 2. I’m concerned that the older U-Point technology that NX 2 incorporates is not nearly as effective as that in Viveza 2. I was originally attracted to NX 2 for its RAW conversion capabilities, but Lightroom’s organizing features and the Nik Suite’s additional plugins seem to tip the balance in favour of Lightroom. Michael Black. Michael – go for the Lightroom combo given what you have now.

You can see from this article that the Lightoom and NX2 raw conversions aren’t drastically different, and any percieved differences can definitely be corrected while editing the photos. Thanks for suppporting the blog!

I am kinda in the same boat as Michael but I don’t have lightroom. I do use Noiseware which I love. What I am looking at doing is just get the Nik collection but I am torn between the lightroom or Photoshop sets. I am going in circles. I am a Nikon shooter D I have used Lightroom since its inception and consider myself an advance, if not expert user.

I find the adjustment brush useful but unwieldy I also used Wacom pen and tablet. I am very comfortable in LR and have no desire to leave it. I also use Photoshop CS3 and am probably an intermediate level user there.

Recently I have seen the work of some other photogs who are using nik software – primarily Color EFex I am very impressed with the filters and think the color point technology is something I want SO, I have been doing my homework that’s how I found your blog! I am ready to buy, but I am not sure what I want and need. I am leaning toward buying the complete collection for Lightroom.

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