I shoot event photography and usually use lightroom for my first choice for pcocessing many photos at once. I downloaded Capture NX2 60 day trial and found that NX2 is very nice.
But:
NX2 is very slow and not setup to easily batch process without jumping through some hoops. One big difference I have found is adjusting contrast. NX2 seems to handle contrast so much better than Lightroom. I find my self adjusting everything in lightroom but when I'm finished, I find my self changing like 25% of the images with NX2 because the contrast just isn't at the same level as NX2.
I love the crop and straightening with lightroom and hate the leveling tool in NX2. I hate getting stuck between the two programs.
Anyone else feel the same way I do or does not many people use NX2?
I prefer the results NX2 can provide but much prefer the function of Lightroom. Grrrr.
Perhaps the interim solution (until Nikon revamps the interface/speed of NX2 or until Adobe gets ahold of Nikon's 'secrets') would be to use Lightroom for the majority of processing and reserving NX2 for difficult conversions or when output quality is of utmost importance.
have you tried lr3 beta yet? and yea people round here do find nnx2 results very good but you need a recent computer to get any speed out of it. have a look at jason odells e-book, pretty good. he has some videos on you tube too, also some vids on nikons web page too.
I just purchased NX2 yesterday, should be getting it from Amazon today. After the 60 day trial, I was going to un-install it but felt like I would miss it. I have an HP with a quad core with Vista 64bit and 8gb of ram but NX2 is still a bit slow. I will upgrade to Windows 7 soon.
A few things to try in Lightroom to get away from the chalky contrast issue. Try the downloadable Nikon D2x profiles, I've got D2x Mode 2 set as my default. Try changing the contrast with the curves adjustments versus the contrast slider, also watch that black point slider. I turn it up until I notice posterization in the blacks, back it down, and then use the curves to adjust from there.
Jammy Straub wrote:
A few things to try in Lightroom to get away from the chalky contrast issue. Try the downloadable Nikon D2x profiles, I've got D2x Mode 2 set as my default. Try changing the contrast with the curves adjustments versus the contrast slider, also watch that black point slider. I turn it up until I notice posterization in the blacks, back it down, and then use the curves to adjust from there.
I spent fifteen or twenty minutes creating my own Lightroom presets that are very similar to out of camera or default NX2 conversions. Mostly it involved modifying the saturation setting of the color channels. They could use just a little more tweaking, but for now they're close enough that I no longer care about NX2.
had the 60 day trial and liked it as my main RAW processor with Photoshop for those extras NX2 cannot handle,, ordered it from B&H last Thursday and it arrived yesterday,,
If you want the best of both worlds, get the Nik plugins for eithet LR or PS. They give you the best of NX2 (U Point).
I own NX2 and never use it anymore - LR2 -> CS4 with the Nik Plugins is my poison of choice. While it is a more expensive option, it just works better, faster and allows full cataloguing/printing/slideshows etc.
I also use LR2 for most daily stuff and NX2 to reprocess my absolute best images.
With LR2, I've recently found that the default import settings increase brightness and contrast quite a bit. I've now made my own preset starting from the "Zero'd Out" LR preset, setting blacks, noise reduction, brightness, and contrast all to zero; and then changing the color profile (see the "Calibration" panel on the right, bottom) to "Camera Vivid". Instantly better results, and I'm now starting to tweak a little.
The D2X color modes are already there in LR2, no downloading needed.
String wrote:
If you want the best of both worlds, get the Nik plugins for eithet LR or PS. They give you the best of NX2 (U Point).
I own NX2 and never use it anymore - LR2 -> CS4 with the Nik Plugins is my poison of choice. While it is a more expensive option, it just works better, faster and allows full cataloguing/printing/slideshows etc.
I prefer the results NX2 can provide but much prefer the function of Lightroom. Grrrr.
Perhaps the interim solution (until Nikon revamps the interface/speed of NX2 or until Adobe gets ahold of Nikon's 'secrets') would be to use Lightroom for the majority of processing and reserving NX2 for difficult conversions or when output quality is of utmost importance.
Speed is perhaps the price you have to pay for better and more accurate and complicated algorithms.
