Workflow

[Gadgit]

About 2.5 months ago I got a Nikon D300. Last Monday I started an intermediate camera course at one of the local adult learning centres. The 1st thing that the instructor spoke about was workflow. This person owns a Cannon. He was showing us his workflow from RAW using the cannon software to quickly tweak one of the same set of pics and then copy this to the others in this group.

The Cannon software seemed to be easy to use, as we could easily see the settings and all of the controls to quickly change the settings such as WB, brightness, etc. Then he could copy these changes and paste them over the other picture in the group. The D300 came with Capture NX and I have been giving this a fair go for a while. It has some good things even thought they are quite quirky to use. But for the above workflow I find Capture a bit of a pain as you have to open each setting one at a time to change it and the biggest thing that is missing is a dropper selection to pick a white for the WB. I may be missing something but I can't see how I could quickly copy setting from one tweaked pic to a lot of others in one go.

The instructor said that the Nikon people could use software such as Bibble, Picisa2 or Lightroom as the Nikon stuff wasn't that good and I tend to agree for what we are trying to do. I have been trialling Bibble Pro and Lightroom and they seem good. I need to make a decision soon as both programs use their own file to track the changes and I can't swap from one to another and see what I have done. It would be good not to have an extra file for each pic and just change the RAW files such as the Cannon or Nikon Capture software does.

Whatever I end up using I will be legally buying so if it I will need to justify spending more if required but will do it if I can see the advantages.

Any suggestions? What are other people using?

[phillipb]

Hi Gadget,
I use lightroom and I am very happy with it, specially since it doubles up as a cataloging software. If you don't have photoshop it goes a long way into giving you basic tools such as cropping, touch ups to get rid of dust spots, manipulating curves etc.

[gstark]

Hi.

If you would have come to the maximeet yesterday, you could have attended a lightroom tutorial that would have shown you exactly this sort of thing.

With Capture NX, you can do pretty much the same as you can with the Canon software. Once you made your adjustments to the first image, you same those as a set of settings, and you can then engage a batch process to apply those settings to a whole bunch of images.

As easy as.

I've not had a good play with ViewNX, but the older Nikon View included a basic image editor that was very good for letting you apply some basic but higher level settings to your images. I should probably have a play with this at some point and see if it gives similar functionality.

[ATJ]

At the moment, CaptureNX is my main raw conversion and post processing software and it does a very good job in my opinion (and so I disagree with your instructor). The only thing I use PaintShopPro for now is watermarking, and some image manipulation like cloning.

After seeing Peter's Lightroom presentation yesterday, I'm going to try it because it looks like it can do everything I'm already doing with ViewNX, CaptureNX and PSP.

[mickeyjuice]

I'm a huge Lightroom fan, and wonder how I survived before it arrived.

[michael_]

im also a lightroom convert, use bridge now to browse images and sort then lightroom to catalogue and minor touchups over an entire batch then if i need to do more work import the shots to PS CS3

[radar]

Nikon Capture NX is actually very good to process Nikon's NEF files. As Gary says, it has the same batch features as the Canon system and the ability to copy settings from one file to multiple others. Using Nikon software, I would suggest you go something like this:

-Nikon Transfer to load your files in from the card. You can had some basic IPTC details here.
-Nikon ViewNX - this will get launched one the transfer is finished. You will see all camera info and will be able to do some basic adjustments, cull your bad ones out, rate them, ...
-Nikon Caputre NX - you can launch directly from ViewNX to do your final editing.

Capture NX does require getting used to the user interface but it does a very good job on the files. Instead of Capture NX you can go in Photoshop.

Transfer and ViewNX are both free downloads from Nikon. Search through the forums, there were some threads not long ago about some good resources on using Capture NX.

I also use Bibble Pro for a very fast workflow on a lot of files. It is easy to use, great set of features, fast and easy batch features.

Cheers,

André

[Gadgit]

Thanks for all of the suggstion and info.

I would have loved to be at the meet yesterday but life is just too full on at the moment. I just got married 6 weeks ago. Maybe in the fututre?

I do already have nikon - transfer, view and capture NX. I will look for the threads on Capture. I did look for threads on workflow but didn't spot stuff on capture.

I think Radar touched on what I am think about with the Bibble Pro for very fast workflow on a lot of files comment.

Thanks,
Steve.

[AndyL]

Gadgit,

My workflow goes like this:

-Download images with Nikon Transfer. Backups are made at the same time.
-At the completion of download Capture NX opens to that folder. I do not normally deal with bulk images (where I do go to VNX before CNX) and the browser in CNX is fine for tagging images as I go.
-Edits to raw images and pass to PS using File>Open With command.
-Do what I have to do in PS (using actions as much as possible) and then go back to CNX for the next image.
It is rare for me to process a lot of images in CNX and then open them in PS. I prefer to see each image through to completion - it keeps the flow going for each image. In this regard, my workflow is not a whole lot different to a Bridge, ACR, PS workflow.

Yes, it is a PITA opening each tool in CNX and in that regard I much prefer NC4 (people bitched about that interface to), but other than that it I would disagree with your instructor. Want colours rendered properly out of the box, then it is hard to go past Nikon software. I use NCX as little more than a raw converter. While it does have some useful editing tools, it is not Photoshop.
I would probably use Bibble Pro plug-in for rapid processing if it was stable on my computers.