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Hi all,

I have just purchased a Nikon D70s and been reading about the advantages of capturing images in RAW instead of Jpeg format. It makes sense to me.

If I go down this path what is the best software package to use (ie software which will allow me to open and edit .nef files), with a budget under $500?

Does Nikon Capture offer all you need, like curves and unsharp mask? What are its limitations? For someone who is familiar with the basics of Adobe Photoshop (at work) is Nikon Capture fairly easy to use? Are there any other software options?


Cheers,

Adam.

Well with Nikon Capture you're probably more gauranteed to get a file read open if they do decide to be bastards and encrypt NEFs for all cameras.
Adobe Photoshop CS2 does a pretty good job at reading NEFs off the D70, not sure what it's like with the D2X (I believe they've managed to read these files now). Plus CS2 is more than just an raw image reader/tweaker.

Adam - basically NC tends to be a very slow program whereas PS (CS or CS2) would be faster. PSCS2 reads the D2X files that I have through ACR 3.1 with no problems.

adamj wrote:Hi all,

I have just purchased a Nikon D70s and been reading about the advantages of capturing images in RAW instead of Jpeg format. It makes sense to me.

If I go down this path what is the best software package to use (ie software which will allow me to open and edit .nef files), with a budget under $500?

Does Nikon Capture offer all you need, like curves and unsharp mask? What are its limitations? For someone who is familiar with the basics of Adobe Photoshop (at work) is Nikon Capture fairly easy to use? Are there any other software options?


Cheers,

Adam.

Adam

Nikon Capture is good, but lacks a lot of the features of PS CS2. If you can't afford PS CS2 - look at Adobe Elements which can also read NEFs using the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 3.1 plugin. Plus look at Nikon View for thumbnailing which is way better than Picture Project. Nikon view is free and can be dl'd here.

I'd also suggest you look at the free Raw Shooter Essentials if you are using Windows

I had a bit of a play with UFraw as a stand alone raw convertor last week. To install it I needed to install the GTK runtime enviornment and the Gimp, but once it was in place it is poosible to uninstall Gimp (assuming that it is unwanted), leaving UFraw as a stand alone app. I mention this as an alternative to Raw Shooter Essentials.

RawMagick (still in Beta) is probably worth a look for US35. For the last few weeks there has been mention of a free curve uploader coming soon. RML promises to be one of the best raw convertors available. With this option I wonder if NC would actually be worth it.

Either way, there would still be a need for an image editor such as PS or Paint Shop Pro.

Cheers

Value for money for a RAW file converter and software for your photo's to do what you want, Photoshop Elements 3 along with the ACR 3.1 upgrade.....

cheers
bp

MattC wrote:I had a bit of a play with UFraw as a stand alone raw convertor last week. To install it I needed to install the GTK runtime enviornment and the Gimp, but once it was in place it is poosible to uninstall Gimp (assuming that it is unwanted), leaving UFraw as a stand alone app. I mention this as an alternative to Raw Shooter Essentials.

RawMagick (still in Beta) is probably worth a look for US35. For the last few weeks there has been mention of a free curve uploader coming soon. RML promises to be one of the best raw convertors available. With this option I wonder if NC would actually be worth it.

Either way, there would still be a need for an image editor such as PS or Paint Shop Pro.

Cheers

Matt

I'm on the Raw Magick Lite beta program and while it's a great tool it is waaaaaay more complicated to use than either NC or PSCS. For me I'll probably stick with NC for much of my work and use RML for the special cases.

From my reading of RML, I got the idea that the workflow is relatively complicated. Still, it is like anything I suppose - I found ACR difficult to come to terms with... with understanding, it is now easy. I have deliberately avoided entering the RML beta program as I already have too many betas installed and I just want software that works. I check for v1 on a nearly daily basis.

Normally I use NC in conjunction with CSP for my own work, ACR for the hard cases and bulk images.

I just had a dig around on the net for pricing on PSE. Boy, I did not realise that it is so cheap ($164 at ht.com.au). It certainly represents excellent value.

Cheers

Matt

G'day Adam,
Capture will handle the NEFs well and offer some basic editing but strewth it's slow, maybe check out PaintShopPro v9 which I think handles D70 files and provides most of PhotoShop's abilties... I have Capture loaded on the PC as well though, so I'm not sure if PSP only opens the NEFs OK because capture's loaded, dunno, worth checking out though on a bang-for-buck comparo...