Thom Hogan's take on Photo Lab and Capture NX2

[davidedric]

I've never shot with Nikon so this doesn't mean anything to me, but picked up the link on LuminousLandscapes.

Dave

http://www.dslrbodies.com/accessorie...pture-nx2.html

[Manfred M]

The Nikon link is more history than anything else; they put some money into Nik software and had them write their raw converter and editing software. When Google bought Nik for Snapseed, they bought everything other than Capture NX and Nikon had to find a replacement to have something to ship with its cameras as Nik became part of Google.

When Google stopped development of Nik software, users started to look for alternatives (and frankly I did not find anything for the one Nik tool I use a lot, Color Efex), so when DxO Labs announced they bought the product from Google, some of us were quite relieved. I have been a long time user of DxO Labs Optics Pro raw converter. In my view it is a stronger product than ACR / Lightroom and Capture One, when I look purely at the raw conversion process, but the editing tools are definitely not as strong as the other products and it is a bit light in some other areas (no tethering or DAM tools).

DxO recently dropped the Optics Pro name and relaunched the product under the new name "PhotoLab" which now incorporates Nik Control Point technology; which is okay, but not something I have ever found particularly good (not refined enough for my liking). I hope that we see continuing development of both product lines. I find that DxO Labs noise reduction approach for raw files is superior to other products on the market, but is not as well suited for fast and easy noise reduction when working in Photoshop. Here Nik's dFine works well.

I look forward to seeing where DxO takes the Nik Collection product and I will most certainly be looking at any upgrade that they put out.

[Abitconfused]

I too have DXO but did not know about the fate of Nik. Hopefully, DXO will offer more of Nik's strengths in the future. DXO has the potential to compete with Adobe LR & PCC but PCC has a lot of tricks and gadgets that would take some late nights at DXO to best. Still, CorelDRAW 2018 seems to me to be well ahead of Illustrator so miracles do happen. To me the giant in Santa Rosa has begun to lose touch. It seems I see a new program area every other week but what have you done for Raw lately?

[Manfred M]

I too have DXO but did not know about the fate of Nik. Hopefully, DXO will offer more of Nik's strengths in the future. DXO has the potential to compete with Adobe LR & PCC but PCC has a lot of tricks and gadgets that would take some late nights at DXO to best. Still, CorelDRAW 2018 seems to me to be well ahead of Illustrator so miracles do happen. To me the giant in Santa Rosa has begun to lose touch. It seems I see a new program area every other week but what have you done for Raw lately?

PCC? = Photoshop CC? PhotoLab is not a competitor to Photoshop at all. It is a parametric editor / raw converter, so it is not in competition with that Adobe product.

[Abitconfused]

Thy both quack like a duck, walk like a duck, and fly like a duck. They are not both ducks?

[Manfred M]

Thy both quack like a duck, walk like a duck, and fly like a duck. They are not both ducks?

But they are not ducks. The functionality of the two has some overlap, but what they can do are effectively as different as night and day.

Parametric editors are usually raw converters with a bit of editing functionality that generally makes global with some limited range-based local and reversible changes to an image.

A pixel based editor is far more powerful and makes pixel level, destructive changes to the image.

[Abitconfused]

Oh, I never thought of that. So DXO is more likely to retain the detail of the original image?

[Manfred M]

Oh, I never thought of that. So DXO is more likely to retain the detail of the original image?

Yes. It is a parametric editor and writes the edit information to a file with the same name as the original, but uses the .dop file extension. This is similar to the way that Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw work, where they write the edit data to a sidecar .xmp file (unless one is using the default LR setting and saving this to the Catalog).

The original image is not changed at all, unless you are working on an image file and overwrite that with a new file using the same name.

[richardvallon]

thanks so much for this concise and very well written "article". Calling this post would be demeaning.