Buy Nikon Capture NX - Complete package - 1 user - CD - Win, MacNikon Capture NX - Complete package - 1 user - CD - Win, Mac Product Description:
Product Description
Capture NX is a revolutionary image editing application designed specifically for digital photographers irrespective of their chosen file format. Designed by photographers for photographers, Capture NX makes refined image enhancement simplicity itself for anyone irrespective of their skill level. Powerful, and yet simple to use, this software permits changes to be made to specific areas of an image by a simple point and click and removes the need for complex masking or layering techniques. Create or modify image enhancements repeatedly without degrading the quality of the image data. Additional dedicated tools are available for those using the NEF (Raw) file format such as correcting lens distortions and vignette. Image adjustments are both independent and fully variable: this eliminates the need for multiple undo steps and allows you to exercise complete control over all aspects of the image. The original image data within the file is always preserved allowing an infinite number of variations to be created and stored without the need to make duplicates of the original source data a feature that saves enormous amounts of disk space. Capture NX. Photo Editing for Photographers.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Superior (but slow) Raw Editor with innovative controls
By Martin Turner
Nikon Capture NX is a professional quality non-destructive developer and editor for Nikon raw files with some innovative features, but which suffers from being slow and memory hungry.At the time of writing, Capture NX offers the highest quality raw conversion for Nikon NEF files of any of the top end applications. Competitors are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Capture One, DxO and Raw Shooter, as well as Bibble and DCRaw. Each has different benefits, but, unsurprisingly, Nikon NX has the edge in interpreting its own raw files.Capture NX also offers a hugely innovative form of spot control, using control points. Essentially it allows you to pick a spot anywhere on the image and apply RGB, HSB, brightness and contrast controls to it, and specify how much of what NX sees as 'similar' areas should be affected by it. It's much easier to use than to explain, and is probably something that we will see on other applications as time progresses.Capture's other unique feature is that it can rewrite and save NEF files, including the preview, so that you can non-destructively edit your photos, and then restore them to the original (or any other state) at any time you wish, since a NEF file is the Raw data plus a set of instructions about how to process it. Currently other applications can only read a limited range of NEF settings, and none of the control point settings, so this is only really useful if you want to open the files in Capture again, but, since, from Capture you can freely save Tiff or JPEG for Photoshop or whatever else you like, this is not really a hardship.Beyond this, Capture has a refined set of controls for image preparation, with the attractive feature that, since everything is non-destructive, you can switch them on or off at any point and, indeed, rearrange them. Within their own limits, they are all best in class, and in most cases, significantly better than Photoshop's native filters. This gives you exceptional control over colour, curves and levels, either globally or with control points, and sophisticated halo-less unsharp masking, a powerful noise filter, and highlight and shadow recovery.So, is Capture NX a Photoshop killer for Nikon users?No, for three key reasons. First, although its built-in features are very refined, it is unable to support standard Photoshop plugins. This is an inevitable consequence of NX's unique non-linear, non-destructive editing. Second, the application is extremely slow, even on a fast machine. Third, again, as a result of Capture NX's non-destructive editing approach, you cannot actually overwrite the pixels, only process them differently. This means that there is no cloning, painting, adding in of other elements, or even adding text.Aside from the slowness, these are not so much limitations as aspects of the unique approach that Nikon has adopted. In a certain sense, Capture only allows you to do 'legitimate' retouching that does not alter the underlying image. For photojournalists, Capture NX does everything that you are ethically allowed to do. If you are working in, say, advertising or portraiture, then you would legitimately be allowed to go further in removing wrinkles, dealing with shadows and discolourations, cloning out stray hairs and removing extraneous elements which could not be avoided while shooting. In this case you would want a workflow where you begin with extracting maximum image quality in Capture NX, before going on to further retouching in Photoshop.You can to some extent mitigate the slowness by using the batch functions. Basically, this means getting the settings right for one image, and then applying them (and saving them) to a range of images shot under the same conditions. Naturally this does not allow you to use control points, but it does mean that you can process an entire wedding overnight while the slowness does not bother you.What, then, is the verdict on Nikon Capture NX? As a general rule, I do my conversions in Photoshop and stay in that application for the entire process. However, when quality is absolutely critical, I do my conversion in Capture and make full use of the control points to refine the image, going to Photoshop as late in the process as I can.Coming in at the price of a good lens filter or a pro-level Photoshop plugin, Capture NX is priced to sell for Nikon users looking for maximum quality to support their Photoshop workflow. Equally, as an application that does everything which is needed to process pictures and make them live, it is excellent value for Nikon shooters who don't need or can't afford the relentless power of Photoshop. The one group of Nikon shooters who should avoid it are people using older, lower specified computers who are already struggling for processing power. For everyone else, highly recommended.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Much more intuitive than Photoshop
By B. Davies
I've never really got to grips with photoshop, what with layers, selections and so on. In contrast, I've found Capture NX much easier to master (or at least become halfway proficient), with U-Points making selective editing much easier. The non-destructive aspect is also great, as you can always undo a mistake. With NEF files (ie RAW files from a Nikon), it's also helpful to have the camera settings imported (unlike in photoshop), so if, for example, you set highly saturated colours in the shot, they will be so in the NEF. If you decide this was too much, you can easily tone it down a bit in NX.On the downside, the software can run slowly (with 1GB RAM), although the recent updates (available online) seem to be addressing this over time. All in all, NX is a much better RAW converter than the one that comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Comment on Nikon Capture NX
By Robin Benedek
This is not a review but a comment. Excellent though Nikon Capture NX is, its usefulness is significantly reduced by its tardiness. Running on a Mac G4 dual 500MHz, adjustments applied to images can take 20-30 seconds to take effect, leading rapidly to feelings of frustration. This makes working with Photoshop a surprisingly nimble task. Prospective purchasers would be well advised to download the demo version of Capture NX and check its speed of operation on their own computers before committing themselves.
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