What I've learned about NX

I've played with this program for 3 days now and maybe a total of 10 hours. I originally downloaded the trial with .Net. It ran excruciatingly slow when executing certain tasks like NR. Other tasks it ran just fine. However, the occasional slowness was too much to live with. A poster recommended I install .Net 2.0 so I uninstalled NX, downloaded 2.0 from Microsoft.com, and downloaded and installed the NX version without .Net. Note - I did not uninstall .Net 1.0.

The difference is stunning and NX is a much faster app than Capture 4.4 (on my PC at least). I do not experience the severe slowness I had before. The sliders are very responsive. I have noticed saving is sometimes slow but I can live with that. Also, the zoom seems to hangup at 50% and above and this takes a brief moment to correct (though it's faster than 4.4's zooming). The app has thrown one error message while trying to save a TIFF which required me to close down and re-launch the app (it saved fine after the re-launch and I haven't had the problem since). (Sidebar: I've sent the error message to the Nikon tech that has been helping me out on the side. This Nikon tech sent me an email after reading one of my posts the other night. I'm amazed that Nikon has someone that is responding to posters through email and helping out.)

All in all I have to say the control points are the best feature in this application. They are everything it was advertised to be however I do find that you really have to be careful when applying them if you have some similar color tones in your image and your "size" is set to a large diameter. I work around this by reducing the size and duplicating the control point then dragging the duplicated point to an adajcent area.

The New Step functionality is also fantastic. Being able to layer enhancements and selectively turn them on/off, alter the opacity and selectively paint them in is just wonderful and powerful flexibility. I also believe the raw conversion results are impressive and I "think" better than 4.4 (though that's just an unsubstantiated opinion since I haven't done a side by side comparison yet).

The double threshold has made the color cast correction that much more efficient. It's much more efficient than Photoshop's Threshold feature since you can do both the light and dark at once and apply the black and white control points while in the Threshold mode (instead of having to twice, once for black and once for white, close the Threshold box and then apply the color sample marks in PS). While I still see myself using Photoshop, I am using it less now than before.

Disclaimer: I have not batch processed at all and my workflow is such that I really don't do a lot of that.

In short I think this is a fantastic application and I will buy it at the end of my trial in a heartbeat. I know there are people that are having trouble out there and all I can say is I hope it works out for you. Some of the problems I've read seem like legitimate issues. Too many of them however are whiny learning curve complaints from people that haven't taken the time to read the manual. If these people would just take the time to learn the application and stop considering learning curve issues as "bugs" then I think they'd see more of the benefits of this application.

To those that have serious slowness issues I can tell you my system setup is a Pentium 4 with 4 GB RAM and Windows XP Professional. As I said earlier, when I reinstalled with .Net 2.0, leaving 1.0 on my system, the application improved by a factor of 10.

Just my .02.

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Doug
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19136674

安裝完成後，初步試用感覺：
0.使用中文說明安裝完成後仍是英文版(選項中沒有中文版)。


1.介面沒有 NIkon Capture 4.4 好用，部分界面隱藏在選單中，無法一目了然。


2.感覺上與 NIkon Capture 4.4 完全不同的軟體。
3.Control Point 的功能非常棒，通過色彩控制點，來分別調整尺寸、亮度、對比度和色調。還可以通過各個控制點的設置欄進行進一步的設置。但需要經驗累積，調整才會完美。


4.Camera Setting 部分增加，COLOR MODE I、II、III、Ia、IIIa、Black and White，各種不同已經設定的效果不仿大家試試，有意思！


5.IPTC Information 可以加入更多的作者資訊，及圖像管理資訊。

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推薦者: kuankuoyun2002, wolfwind

jenhoxen大大：
NX可和NC 4.4同時存在，不會蓋過去，可放心安裝。

感謝 as159 說明，因為原安裝為 cnxeur.zip (檔案大小 201,541KB)，沒有中文版。

現改用 82樓 連結點下載安裝 第一步出現


現在可以安裝中文繁體版了


安裝完後的介面變成中文版本了

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推薦者: wolfwind

沒錯，必需用完整版，才有支援多國語言，
檔案大雖大，但有其價值！

正奇怪為何我看到的是中文版？......

太棒了! 氣勢非凡啊~~

First Capture NX photo

Downloaded the trial tonight and played around with it. A bit funky feeling at first - didn't take too long to get the hang of it though. It actually seems to make a lot of sense logically.. to me anyways. I haven't read any of the documentation - I enjoy trying to figure stuff out on my own.

Anyway, here's the picture. 99% processed in Capture NX - then threw it into CS2 to downsize and USM. I played it pretty safe in Capture NX - some curves adjustments, warmed it up a bit, white balance adjustment, and some other tweaks here and there. Haven't explored control points yet.

Overall I'm pleased with it. A big improvement over NC 4.4, IMHO. I also still love the fact that they integrate the histogram with the curves. Why oh why will Adobe not do this!???? (or should I read the CS2 manual? :) )

This was from my recent visit to the Biltmore Estate. We stayed at the inn on the property so I was able to sneak up to the house after it had closed and see the sunset. :)

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19158128

Capture NX not as bad as I thought...

So, after ranting about slow performance, I worked with NX more and more and with some reorganising of cache and ensuring that all images to be opened were on my internal drive and not an external one, I can now do quite a few corrections and save a file as tiff in between 30-60 seconds. I just don't attempt noise reduction as the time goes up to 6-8 minutes!! And if the file is on an external drive, it takes 4-6 minutes to process.

Here is an original shot I processed in Capture One:

And here is the NX version with white point, some colour control points, some contrast and some sharpening:

I prefer the NX version but I am sure I could match it with C1. The beak is interesting. The C1 version is all yellow but the NX version shows green tones too. just wish I could remember what the colours were so I can assess which is more accurate. I think I may be changing my mind about NX though :-)

Simon

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19167063

Boston pic with D200 + NX

Here is one of my first attempts at using NX to try to turn a very flat and boring photo into something more interesting. I used multiple control points to make the sky and water more dramatic. I also used the selection paintbrush to "paint" some USM and additional contrast onto the bridge and buildings, which helped overcome the light haze that afflicted the actual scene. I applied various other adjustments, mostly to make the scene warmer.

This is the original, unprocessed version:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/81001312-O


And below is the edited version. What do you think? Does it look overprocessed?

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19161369

Re: Boston pic with D200 + NX

Overprocessed? No way.... I think it looks great!!! I was faced with a very similar situation in Boston the day before (July 5)... here's the before:

Using CS2, I made adjustment layers for levels, curves and color balance to get the aircraft carrier looking the way I wanted, then I painted the original detail back into the dinghy using the history brush. Here's the after version:

What do you think?


Best regards,
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Camera Sheik
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19162380

NX Opened from NikonView???

Has anybody been able to get NX to open from NikonView? I'm trying to add NX to the editor list and make it the default instead of NC 4.4.

So far I can't even add it to the list (it doesn't show up to add, even when searching for it).

This is on a PC with NV 6.2.7....

thx, mark
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19188945

Click add/remove, then

Go down to the bottom of the list and click Other, then browse to find it...

Works for me,
Cheers
Don
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19189022

Re: NX Opened from NikonView???

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=14036&p_created=1152733867&p_sid=z3Q94rci&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PTM6MiZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTEmcF9wcm9kcz00MiwyOTgmcF9jYXRzPTAmcF9wdj0yLjI5OCZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1

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-Steve
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19189635

IF you want it as the default program for editing in Nikon View

If you want NX as the default program for editing in Nikon View, so you can just click the button to edit and not have to select it from the list every time, do this. After you add it to the list of editing programs like the previous poster linked, then go to tht "Edit" menu then "preferances". In the new window click the "still image" tab, then click the selection for "use the following program and then click the change button and select it.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=19190855