Capture NX D Beta available!!

[PaoloMtl]

If you're a fan of Capture NX2 then perhaps you'll be interested to know that a beta version of it's successor has been released for free download! I'm already downloading the 113MB file from:

http://beta.nikonimglib.com/download....en#os-windows

More information at: http://beta.nikonimglib.com/features/index.html.en

Unfortunately I'll have to update my OS to Windows 8.1 before I can try it. :-( I hate upgrading a stable machine!

Anyone else using Capture NX2 out there? Thought we can swap some impressions of the beta on this thread.

Oh ya, and the D4s has been announced!

[chrisletts]

It's a bit worrying that:
"once the official version of Capture NX-D is released, we will no longer support Capture NX 2 with updates"

Unless the bit about being free applies to the final version as well as the beta..

Actually it doesn't look much different to NX-2 on first sight.

[chrisletts]

At second glance - it's a devil to find the function your want (e.g. unsharp) and I cannot find the auto-retouch anywhere...
This looks to me more like ViewNX2 with a few additions, rather than a new Capture NX

[Mike Buckley]

Capture NX2 is my primary software and it took me only about five minutes of reading Nikon's official information about the new product to decide that it would be a complete waste of time to try using it. It has no control point technology and the current plan is that it never will. It can't display edits made in CNX or CNX2 using control point technology, which means the product is not even backward compatible. Unlike CNX and CNX2, JPEG and TIFF files cannot be saved as a NEF.

Worse yet, once this sofware is officially released, Capture NX2 will no longer support camera models not yet released. That means that once I upgrade my camera to a model not supported by NX2, I will no longer be using Nikon software to post-process my images. That's a really stupid decision by Nikon (unless there are so few CNX2 users that it doesn't matter to them) because that means I will also be delaying as long as possible my purchase of a newer camera.

Nikon should be ashamed of officially naming the product Capture NX-D, falsely implying that it is an upgrade to Capture NX2 when clearly it is not.

All in all, news of the upcoming NX-D release is very limiting for me.

[chrisletts]

I guess we've kind of expected this ever since Google bought out nik software (which makes NX2).

I'm blowed if I'm going to pay a monthly ransom to Adobe to use one of their products so I'll have to stick with the current NX2 version.

[NorthernFocus]

One reason I finally bit the bullet and switched to LR was due to the inevitable death of CNX2. I had visions of returning to the old days of Nikon Capture before Nik got involved.

You can still purchase LR without going the licensing route. LR plus a few plugins is turning out to be more useful than CNX2 ever was. I'm not sure if Nik plugins work in LR or not. If so that could be a route for those who like the control point technology. OnOne has a plugin that gives you layers albeit in a .psd copy of the image, not on the RAW file.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm not sure if Nik plugins work in LR or not.

The Google Nik website indicates that all products can be used as plugins with LR.

You can still purchase LR without going the licensing route.

I'm sure you meant without going the subscription route. If you don't subscribe, you must purchase the one-time license.

[Manfred M]

The Google Nik website indicates that all products can be used as plugins with LR.



I'm sure you meant without going the subscription route. If you don't subscribe, you must purchase the one-time license.

When Google bought Nik, it did not buy either ViewNX or CaptureNX, so these are now purely Nikon products and not supported in any way by Nik/Google.

[NorthernFocus]

...I'm sure you meant without going the subscription route. If you don't subscribe, you must purchase the one-time license.

Exactly.

That reminds me of something I heard once in a communication training class. Something like:

"I know you heard what I said. But what you understood was not what I meant."

[PaoloMtl]

Nikon should be ashamed of officially naming the product Capture NX-D, falsely implying that it is an upgrade to Capture NX2 when clearly it is not.

All in all, news of the upcoming NX-D release is very limiting for me.

I concur. Just installed the app and gave it a test drive (BTW, it installs fine on Win8, didn't need to go to 8.1). My initial joy turned to shock as this software is but a slightly more useful version of View NX2 and even at that, I think I'm being generous.There's no capacity to select areas. No clone tool or auto retouch brush. Basically looks like ViewNX2 with LCH, levels and curves, grey/white/black points and unsharp mask. And I haven't read through all the material yet but from what i gather it saves all alterations to what they call a "sidecar" file. Not sure how LR does it but I really liked having all my adjustments in a NEF file... no fuss at all.

This beta is definitely sending me the message that I need to buy and learn Lightroom and I'm not happy about that. I'm just lucky I can get it for $90 through my work. I'll keep using Capture NX2 for the foreseeable future since I really do like it.

[Saorsa]

I just took a look at it and my first impression is negative compared to NX2.

[Mike Buckley]

This review provides information about what the new product does, does not do and will never do. The information about what it does is a lot shorter than the other information.

[Saorsa]

I just took a look at it and my first impression is negative compared to NX2.

I took another look and uninstalled it. It doesn't appear to be useful to me.

[Andrew1]

If Nikon ticks off enough people, the user won't mind when the company gets really lazy and/or cheap and defaults to third party decoders such as Adobe. Let it get really bad and the users will actually think it's an improvement to do that. Nikon can reduce cost by getting out of that end of the business all together and handing it off in the years to come. I think the writing is on the wall and there aren't many contenders. Hopefully it's NIK. Anything Adobe thinks they have the market cornered in, they will charge more for whether or not it's a better product. Nikon in the cloud anyone?

[Mike Buckley]

Andrew,

I'm having difficulty understanding your thinking. Nikon abandoned CNX2, which was licensed for a fee, and incurred development costs to bring out CNX-D, which will be available for free. Instead, Nikon could have simply made CNX2 available for free.

This makes me wonder if there isn't something in the agreements drawn up years ago with Nik that forbids Nikon from continuing to release software utilizing Nik's control point technology.

[Jeff S]

I'm not sure if Nik plugins work in LR or not.

It does. I'm using Nik as a plugin for LR5 as well as PScc.

[Mike Buckley]

Click here to review the CNX-D manual.

[John Morton]

Click here to review the CNX-D manual.

Thanks for that, Mike. Downloaded the program today; played with it a bit. Didn't see the adjustment I used the most, "Highlight / Shadow Protection"; but now I can find it.

Also noted this in the manual, which I was playing with today and found very interesting indeed:

"The LCH color space models color using values for lightness (a property similar but not identical to brightness or luminance), chroma (color saturation), and hue. These parameters can be accessed via the channel menu in the image adjustment palette when the LCH tool is selected."

I never did get around to working with the "Color Point" technology NIK brought to Capture NX2; but this LCH model seems to be very promising...

[shreds]

I lost faith in NX2 a few years ago when it had an issue with a Mac OSX upgrade I did. I was at one point discussing it with their engineers in both Germany and Japan. The writing was on the wall as long ago as that, as they had no intention of doing NX3, which is what was needed. It was potentially very good and could have been better. But things move on and you cannot cease to develop software. If NX-D is seen as a development..........

So I have been using the industry standard since then

[Mike Buckley]

John,

The LCH tool really is terrific asuming that it works in CNX-D the same way it works in CNX2. I use it as the very first step in my editing workflow with every single photo.

I don't know what the manual says about it, so I'll explain. The Levels and Curve tool built into the tool is ideal because the color won't change when you use it. The Chroma tool allows you to adjust the saturation of the entire image (by raising or lowering the entire bar using its handle on the right side) and/or to adjust the saturation of individual ranges of tones (by raising or lowering sections of the bar and then using the handle at the bottom of the tool to widen the range of tones being affected). I rarely use the Hue tool, but it works just like the middle area of the Chroma tool to map a particular hue to another hue.

The screenshot shown below is how I set the Chroma tool for typical landscapes that I want to have the look of Fuji slide film. (It's not my idea; it's in Jason Odell's first book about using Capture NX.) The one thing missing from the screen shot is that once you manually place a point inside the graph, a triangular handle will appear that allows you to adjust the range of tones that will be affected.



If I remember correctly, CNX-D allows you to save each edit step as a named preset. As an example, I have a preset named "Landscape" that automatically makes the following adjustments when I load it:

• Eliminates all in-camera sharpening of the RAW file
• Uses the sharpening parameters that are typically ideal for the camera that I used to capture the image
• Includes the Chroma tool set as shown above

Keep in mind that the parameters used in the Sharpening tool are very different from the parameters used by Adobe. If you let me know the Nikon cameras you use, I may be able to give you some reasonable starting parameters to use for each camera.