Custom Curve+NC+PS-CS or PS-CS, not sure which...

[Charlie Chalk]

Hi

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, did a search and found similar stuff, but.....

I'm playing around with a customer curve in the camera, with PP in NC then moving into PS-CS.

What I'm wondering (and would very much appreciate your thoughts/advice on) is - am I adding a step that I don't need by using NC?

I know the Custom Curve thing won't work in ACR, but it's not that hard to simulate it with the settings available in ACR.

I've read one or two (here's one) articles on the pro's and cons, but I'm still not sure what's best.

NC isn't as quick opening and working with files as PS-CS, and I do like to simplify things where ever possible but not if it's going to sacrifice image quality.

Please let me know your thoughts, the trial of NC is coming to an end (about 10 days left I think) so the extra cost of paying for the full version of NC is an extra factor.

Thanks!

CC PS any thoughts of having a meet in Tyne and Wear UK? I've been reading some of the posts about previous meets and they look really great.

I can provide drinks and food and a couple of beds as well, might leave transport arrangements to you guys though!

[Hlop]

I'm in doubts too. Few days ago I opened the same NEF in NC and in PS RAW plugin. In both applications all I've done is exposure correction to roughly same point, left sharpening unchanged in NC and set sharpening to 0 in PS RAW and then opened resulting images in PS, corrected levels and curves and slightly sharpened.

In image, initially opened with NC I've got some sort of chromatic abberations but nothing like this from PS RAW plugin. Image from NC looked bit more saturated (but I didn't change saturation) but appearance of PS image I liked better.

It was just first experiment and I'm going to play with it bit more this weekend

[stubbsy]

Well guys I'm going through this process at the moment too. I'm seriously looking at Bibble to replace the lot since it thumbnails and batch converts. At present here's what I've been doing:

1. View images in Thumbsplus (or you could use ACDSee or anything else that let's you look at the images at a decent size, one after the other)
2. move or delete the crap photos
3. decide if image needs rotation by a degree or two or fancy filter work - if so it goes into Photoshop, otherwise it's Nikon Capture
4. In either NC or PS do the cleanup, curves, levels, sharpening etc
5. crop the image if necessary
6. If NC, save the NEF. If PS, save the PSD
7. If necessary, create appropriate jpg for uploading to web etc.

As you can see this requires 2 or three different pieces of software. Bibble seems at first glance to do the lot. I took a look at PS Elements a while back (V2 not V3) and discounted it as I didn't have fine enough control. I also have Raw Magik Lite (currently beta) and am playing with it. I looked at Phase One Capture 1 but it's interface is awkward to say the least.

Like NC, Bibble is non destructive in that the changes are saved separately to the NEF. It has thumbnail browsing, image enhancement etc (although nowhere near the sohpisticated range of filters that PS has).

As I say I want a single solution hence my leaning towards Bibble.

Cheers, and sorry for the length !