ckcarr
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david debalko wrote:
What will give the highest quality files from the 750 NEFs? Capture NX2 had its quirks but I did like the nef conversions.O got to play with the 750 for a good hour - very nice camera.
Nikon NEF files have always been proprietary. The third party vendors have always had to "reverse engineer" them. The raw file conversions by any of those companies are based on best estimates by their software engineers as they unlock the files. Obviously, that's probably not that difficult anymore - to get close.
The Nikon supported software, either View NX2 or NX-D, will still give you the "best" conversion as an initial starting point that reflects the in-camera settings, simply because they have access to the code. Unfortunately, that's as far as they take you, a tiff. Realistically, that may be enough however for 95% of your images. As I stated above in a different reply, there are workarounds. What you lose is the ability to go completely backwards (without completely starting over).
As a practical matter, fine photography processing is going to be much more dependent on the users (Your) skill level than with whatever piece of software you pick. The software's are all complex, going beyond basic conversions will take a concerted effort on your part to really learn how to process judiciously and not garishly. Fortunately, whichever you choose, there are hours and hours of free tutorials on Adobe's and other's sites, or via YouTube, etc. But, there's no way you could tell the differences between software's looking at final images, if processed properly. That behind the scenes work should be invisible.
Personally, I'd still start with View NX2 because it shows the images with the in-camera settings applied, and it's really easy to scroll through all your images (without it building a catalogue like Lightroom). The other's don't do that. Anyway, it's free, and you can completely remove it later if you don't like it. I'd get Photoshop Elements, or Lightroom (just for the raw converter). Or, you can even download the Adobe "DNG Converter" for free (no real tools though).
Anything else is going to be budget driven. You can try the Photoshop Creative Cloud for $9.95 / month, or outright purchase of Lightroom for $79, or Photoshop Elements (I read it now has "Content Aware Fill"), or any of the others. The sky's the limit. I think the Adobe software's are all using the same raw converters (not sure of Elements). And all the companies have 30-day free trials you can download.
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