First experience with Nikon Capture NX2

If you’re really into digital photography you might know what RAW format is. You know when you take photos with a digital camera you can set the camera to save the photos you take to the memory card in different formats. The standard format is JPG but some cameras, at least DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex) and higher end compacts too can save in another format called RAW.

Let’s first deal with what happens when you shoot JPG. You take the photo and depending on the settings in the camera the photo is processed in various ways, compressed so it takes up less space, and finally saved to the memory card. Once it’s on the memory card, in all it’s processed form, there is no going back. Through the processing and the compression the original information captured by the camera is gone and only it’s “interpretation”, partially based on your settings, is saved.

To simplify a bit, the main difference with RAW compared to JPG is that the camera applies very little if any processing before the image is saved to the memory card. This means the RAW file is larger than a corresponding JPG and it also requires more of you in terms of post processing. Another difference is that you can do a lot with a RAW photo in post processing on your Mac that you can’t do with a JPG. For example, there is something called White Balance in digital photography. Basically it has to do with the temperature of the light. Early morning light is “warmer” than mid-day light, fluorescent light, common in many office environments, is very green, for example. Our eyes adjust to these differences without us thinking about it but a digital camera does not. Digital cameras have different settings for white balance and they typically do an okay job with automatically deciding which one to use. When you take a photo and it’s saved as a JPG the camera has already applied the white balance and there’s no going back even after you’ve transferred it to your Mac. If the white balance was not applied correctly, like if the camera applied a daylight white balance when it should have been a tungsten white balance, the colors in the photo are going to look “off”. When you take a RAW photograph you can on your Mac change the white balance and apply different ones to see which one works best. Again, you can do much more in post processing when you shoot RAW.

So to sum up, JPG format is easier to work with especially as it is universally supported but you sacrifice some quality and flexibility. With RAW you get maximum quality and flexibility but it is not as compatible and requires more of you in post processing.

To work with RAW you have to have software that can read the RAW format and let you work with the photo. Adobe Photoshop, Apple Aperture, and Adobe Lightroom are among the more common softwares used for RAW processing.

Another one, perhaps not as commonly known, is Nikon’s Capture NX 2. It’s basically Nikon’s RAW processing and editing software and meant especially for Nikon’s RAW format files, NEF. Even though you’ll only get the full potential out of Capture NX2 if you shoot RAW (NEF) you can use the software with most functionality available even on JPG, TIFF, and other file formats. Unfortunately you’ll have to spend some money to get it as it is not free. Currently Capture NX2 goes for around $140 on Amazon.com.

Capture NX2 is an application full of functionality and I won’t go over all of it with you in this article. I hope to be able to return to the app in future issues of Shufflegazine, perhaps with tutorials.

When you open a photograph in Capture NX2 you see a sidebar with a number of controls. By clicking check boxes and dragging sliders you can control most aspects of the exposure like contrast, brightness, white balance, and more. The application can also attempt to correct chromatic aberration (often called purple fringing), red eye, and vignetting (dark corners). In fact, it’s almost like you’re looking at the photo through the camera and can play around with various settings in the camera.

These things are not that unique to Capture NX2 but something else is, the Control Point.

The Control Point is an easy to use tool with which you can very quickly make some dramatic edits to a photo. You just select the Control Point tool and then click on the photo where you want to make the adjustment. Once you do that the software shows you a set of sliders. With each Control Point you place you get sliders for the Size of the effect, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, Red, Green, Blue, and Warmth. Just drag each one to the left or the right to adjust them and you see the effect immediately. Since you can place many of these Control Points on a photo you can control different parts of the exposure. For example, you could with a few clicks make the sky look more blue and the ground more green. The software makes the effect of the Control Points blend seamlessly into one another.

You can make a set of adjustments to a photo and save those as a set, which you can then apply to other photos in a batch operation. It’s not as easy as Lift and Stamp in Aperture but it works pretty well.

So far I’m very happy I made the investment in Capture NX2 and I would say that for anyone working with NEF it’s a must have application.

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