Nikon Capture NX

Nikon Capture NX

Nikon, as most camera manufacturers do, includes a basic RAW/NEF image editor when you buy the camera. Unlike other companies though, they have teamed up with Nik software which is an American company that makes some very innovative image enhancement software such as Color Efex Pro. The subject on this page is Capture NX which really is the best piece of software you can use if you want to get every last bit of quality out of your images.

Capture NX will let you work on your Jpeg and TIFF files, where it really shines however is with processing NEF shots from your Nikon dSLR. Capture NX is the one application that will recognize the settings used in your camera at the time the NEF/RAW shot was taken including colour mode, saturation, sharpening and white balance amongst others. It is also one of the new generation of applications that enables you to work in a non-destructive way with your images when making adjustments. This is a very cool feature for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it always preserves the original shot exactly the way it was captured even after you’ve finished editing it, which drives the meaning behind a NEF equalling a negative. It doesn’t matter how many changes you make to the shot, indeed you can have multiple versions of the same shot with many different adjustments each and the original remains just that, the original pristine image. NX is accomplishing this by using instruction sets, which is to say its not actually changing the image when you make adjustments, all its doing is telling the software which adjustments you want with that version using a list of instructions. This leads nicely to the next huge benefit of a non-destructive editing application, since you’re not saving multiple versions of the same image each time you change something, you’re saving huge amounts of hard drive space as the instruction sets for each version take up precious little space - compared to huge amounts of hard drive space when saving actual images for each version.

Capture NX’s real stand-out feature and the reason I transfer my NEF files to it, instead of CS3 most of the time now, is the introduction of what Nik calls U-Point™ technology. Think of it in a similar way as layers in Photoshop, except they are easier to use which leads to it being easier to get what is often times quite dramatic results. Let’s say you take a shot in the Lake District and there is quite strong lighting that day so the sky is a little washed out, the trees and water a touch dark and muted. You could simply add a control point to the sky and then tailor its size which would enable the software to tweak the areas of the image that match and adjust the brightness, boost the colour and hue, plus its all done in real time as you move simple sliders. You could go wild and change the colour of the sky completely if you wanted to, so you can see how you could likewise tweak the lake and tree’s to make them more vibrant in our imaginary image above. It truly is a remarkable piece of software and allows you to get terrific results very quickly.

Befitting an application from Nikon, you also have access to D-Lighting which can be very useful in some shots as it has an effect similar to increasing the dynamic range after the shot is taken. NX also has, what is to my eye, the best noise reduction on NEF files of any application I’ve tried on my shots taken with a Nikon camera. The sharpening too is also very good, although I wouldn’t say its better, nor worse, than its rivals in that department. If you have the excellent Nikon 10.5mm DX fisheye, Capture NX will allow you to convert the shot from a fisheye image into a normal wide angle image, which makes it an even more useful lens. If you look closely at the image, you can tell of course, but NX overall does an excellent job of converting it so that the image is certainly usable and if you have that particular fisheye lens, makes NX an almost must-have.

Nikon’s Capture NX offers a lot for a shot taken by any camera, but its really NEF files taken with a Nikon dSLR where it really shines. It has some unique and genuinely useful features that enable you to bring out the very best in your image that you’ll find with no other application. When I first started writing this, Capture NX was something that everyone had to buy but its now being bundled with the D3 & D300 which is terrific news and something that should certainly be downloaded if you’ve bought one of those bodies. For everybody else, if you are using a Nikon dSLR I wouldn’t hesitate to give the free trial download a spin. I think you’ll find you quickly utilize its abilities to give you results better than what you’ve been able to achieve before. There are some things I’d like to see changed of course like any application. The interface could use some, or quite a bit to be honest, tidying up as it feels a bit messy - including the fully ICC colour aware printing interface. I find NX uses a huge amount of RAM too, and while it never felt slow on my older computer with 1.5GB of RAM it somehow manages to use 2GB of my 4GB in the new workstation on its own which is a little odd. These are small things though, and NX is an application I depend on daily as I know the results will be the best quality I can get. If you use a Nikon dSLR camera, NX is an easy application to recommend as it offers the best you can get, what more can be said.