Capture NX

[Scooby_snax]

Anyone in here purchased and used Capture NX and more importantly downloaded the upgrade 1.01 have used the trial version which was a bit 'clunky' but I believe with the upgrade things have improved particularly with the bath processing.
Views please
Steve

[Scooby_snax]

Nikon produce a great product but are absolutely cr+p at marketing.
My previous question is somewhat irrelevant as there is no available NX software in the UK.
Why do Nikon offer a trial download and then not offer (to European residents) the opportunity to purchase the product key online? Now I have to wait until the nest shipment comes into the UK, purchase a box from the dealer that contains nothing but air and a CD.
I want to give Nikon my money but they make it extremely difficult for me
I wont go into the fact it costs c£80 in the USA and c£120 in the UK

[fergusd]

I downloaded the latest trial version the other day . . . initially I thought it looked promising, much faster than previous versions, and a world away from the old version of capture, but with more prolonged use it still grinds to a halt . . . running it on a 3.2GHz P4 with 1Gb RAM and as much disk as you could ever need . . . the machine seems to be running out of RAM and starting to page to disk - when it, of course, just dies . . . come on Nikon, get somebody who knows how to write software to take this project over . . .

Fd

[Scooby_snax]

Fergus..have you also downloaded the update 1.01 which is also available as a trial?

[fergusd]

That's what I'm running . . .

Disappointing really . . .

Fd

Edited by fergusd on Sunday 24th September 17:34

[CVP]

It also runs way way slow for me too. I had to download the update to get the RAW images from Mrs CVP's new D80 converted. So far I have found it very inferior to Rawshooter which I'm using for me RAW images.

Why Nikon persist in writing their own software i do not know.

Oh and to add to that the £100 price reduction within 7 days of launch of the D80 does not inspire much customer loyalty either.

Chris

[fergusd]

Rawshooter blows it away in terms of usability and speed.
Rawshooter makes lightroom look pathetic in terms of usability and speed.
Adobe killed Rawshooter.
Nikon can't do PC applications to save their lives.

Strangely though I did some tests after some reading online and do slightly question rawshooter s Capture NX's image quality . . . very subtle but I think there is something in it . . .

All that is academic though, lightroom and capture NX are both effectively unusable bloatware . . . these companies should stick to building the hardware and let someone professional write the software . . . Rawshooter was an example of what was possible . . .

pish

Fd

[CVP]

fergusd said:

Rawshooter was an example of what was possible . . .

Fd

Quite right, I love Rawshooter it really seems to work well for me a non-teccie and it quite intuitive. I will have a play with Capture NX further to see if I can see what you mean re image quality, after all I've got another 20 day sor so on the trial download.

I'm also trying Capture One LE (demo) just to see what that is like as if Mrs CVP continues to shoot RAW we will need a RAW converter of some kind and LE is pretty much the same price as Capture NX.

Chris

[heelantoe]

fergusd said:

All that is academic though, lightroom and capture NX are both effectively unusable bloatware . . . these companies should stick to building the hardware and let someone professional write the software . . . Rawshooter was an example of what was possible . . .

pish

Fd

I have to disagree with you here. Have you actually tried to use Capture NX and the U Point tools to correct colour casts, change and increase saturation on colours and use them to set white and black points in an image. Try and do those corrections in Adobe Photoshop and see how long it takes you.
Nikon haven't written this software themselves it's actually written by Nik software and the U Point technology was developed by this company. Nikon aren't trying to say it's a replacement for Adobe Photoshop as there are plenty of tools in there that NX doesn't have. But if you spend some time with it and get to know how it works it can speed up the process a hell of a lot.
It's just one of those things where you have to spend some time with a completly new software to learn how to get the best from it.

[fergusd]

heelantoe said:

fergusd said:

All that is academic though, lightroom and capture NX are both effectively unusable bloatware . . . these companies should stick to building the hardware and let someone professional write the software . . . Rawshooter was an example of what was possible . . .

pish

Fd

I have to disagree with you here. Have you actually tried to use Capture NX and the U Point tools to correct colour casts, change and increase saturation on colours and use them to set white and black points in an image. Try and do those corrections in Adobe Photoshop and see how long it takes you.
Nikon haven't written this software themselves it's actually written by Nik software and the U Point technology was developed by this company. Nikon aren't trying to say it's a replacement for Adobe Photoshop as there are plenty of tools in there that NX doesn't have. But if you spend some time with it and get to know how it works it can speed up the process a hell of a lot.
It's just one of those things where you have to spend some time with a completly new software to learn how to get the best from it.

I totally agree that capture offers some fantastic features, but it is slow and clunky and as I said it totally grinds to a halt on what I would suggest is a reasonably specced machine . . . frankly waiting 2+ seconds for actions to happen, waiting on the effects of slider bars catching up (seconds sometimes) makes what may be a very cool product unusable, it's like being back in the 80's performance.

You may think that 10Gb of RAM and a 200GHz CPU is appropriate, I'm afraid I don't, especially when you consider software like the late Rawshooter ran like a dream on the same hardware platform.

The last version of capture was even worse, it was perhaps the most clunky and slowest pile of crud that ever spoiled my machine . . . I had hoped, and there was discussion around, this one being much better in that respect . . .

I would really like to buy it because I see usefull features that other software doesn't have, it's not too costly either, but if it's unusably slow on anything but yet another 3K's worth of PC it starts getting expensive . . .

Fd