Product Description

Capture NX is a radically enhanced and redesigned version of Nikon's digital image editing software. It delivers powerful and dedicated tools for photographers who want to work with their raw digital images (NEF file). Until now only possible with extensive mastery of layers and masking techniques -- but with the creative advantages of U Point technology, you'll be able to subtly blend with other adjustments to provide a natural looking result. Capture NX will revolutionize the way photographers work with digital images. Choice of positive or negative application of selective tools for Brush, Lasso and Marquee (four kinds), Gradient and Fill/Remove Reinforced Color Management optios include Perceptual, Saturation, Relative Colorimetric and Absolute Colorimetric Inherits advanced functions like Color Aberration Control, D-Lighting, Image Dust Off, Vignette Control and Fisheye-to-Rectilinear Image Transformation Compatible with non-Nikon cameras Part of the Nikon Total Imaging System comprising cameras, lenses, Speedlights, film scanners, accessories and related software Operating Systems - Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional; Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later System Requirements - CPU 1.0 GHz Pentium III/G4 or G5 processor or higher; 256MB RAM; 800 x 600 display; CD-ROM; Internet connection

Product Details

• Brand: Nikon
• Model: 25338
• Dimensions: 2.25 pounds

Features

• U-Point technology delivers powerful tools to help you fully realize the potential of your photographic imagination
• Makes NEF, JPEG and TIFF processing and editing elegant and easy for any photographer
• No complicated procedures; interface provides intuitive access to all of the tools you need
• Select and isolate an entire image or selected areas within the image for enhancement
• Adjust any of up to nine different sliders with Color Control Points: size, brightness, contrast and hue

Manufacturer Description
Supercharge your workflow with the next generation of high-quality image editing and processing. Utilizing U Point technology, Advanced Nikon Capture 4 delivers you powerful tools to help you fully realize the potential of your photographic imagination. The new Capture NX software releases not only the power of Nikon's Electronic Format (NEF) files; for the first time it makes JPEG and TIFF processing and editing elegant and easy enough for any photographer to implement. There are no complicated procedures - Nikon's new interface provides intuitive access to all of the tools you need. Make you photographic possibilities endless and realize the power of your imagination with Capture NX.

U Point technology

Capture NX image editing utilizes Nik Software's patented U Point technology. This new innovation in photo image processing and editing can be applied to Nikon's NEF files, as well as any camera's JPEG and TIFF files (some Capture NX functions apply to NEF files only). Capture NX features powerful tools that enhance images without complicated processes. Simply select a control point and adjust it's slider until you see the image as you like it. It's a highly visual, intuitive technique.

Color Control Points
Color Control Points let you directly select and isolate an entire image or an area within it for enhancement quickly. Within moments, you can choose and use any Color Control Point to modify any aspect of a selected area including: Size, Hue, Brightness, Saturation, Contrast, Red, Green, Blue, and Warmth.

Capture NX also "learns" to distinguish multiple control points. This feature eliminates complexity and saves you time when you are making a series of enhancements to your photograph. This lets you create your professional quality image in a matter of seconds!

Show Selection for accurate control
Use the "show selection" feature for each Color Control Point to see which area of the image is affected by the Color Control Point. This process reverses the image into a black and white view and clearly shows the image areas under adjustment.

Black, White, Neutral Control Points
Black, White and Neutral Control Points can be used to set the dynamic range and correct color casts in your images. Neutral Control Points can also be used to set color balance in an image. Each Control Point appears on the image and can be easily dragged from point to point, for precise movement and positioning to achieve the desired effect. The Control Points' sliders let you adjust their effect for the respective Control Point areas. Neutral Control Points can be used to set a targeted color to any color available within the color picker. This is useful for removing color casts and toning, even without a neutral object in the scene. Use of multiple Neutral Control Points helps reduce multiple color casts and enhance selected colors in images. The drag, point and slider control is very easy to use, yet very powerful and creative in its effect!

Red-eye reduction
Thanks to U Point technology, red-eye can be easily removed. Just place a Red-Eye Reduction Control Point on each of the offending eyes, and away it goes! With just a few slider adjustments, you can use a color Control Point to make blue (or any other eye color) eyes brighter, darker or more radiant. With a mere Ctrl-D click, you can duplicate your Color Control Point, so you can rest assured that the effect to each eye will be the same.

Photo Quality

Non-destructive image editing
Capture NX applies non-destructive image processing to NEF files, which means that you'll never compromise your original image. Every enhancement made is saved in an edit list with the original data and thumbnail. When changes are made to a JPEG or TIFF, however, it will affect the quality of the original image. To avoid compromising the quality of your images, Capture NX allows you to save the image under a different file name, or simply covert the file into Nikon's NEF format.

No modifications made to NEF files
Parameters set on any Nikon camera-produced NEF file (White Balance, Sharpening, Color Mode, Saturation, etc.) are applied to the image you transfer to Capture NX for editing. So your creative photographic decisions are preserved, and there's less to do later when you're finishing the photo on your computer.

Versatility

Enjoy the sheer power and convenience of intuitive photo editing.

Selective tools
With Capture NX, you get additional tools that allow you to apply over 25 enhancement styles.

Batching
By automatically applying one or more enhancements to a series of images, the new, improved batch processing of Capture NX is simple, and saves photographer's time.

Edit List
For easier, more intuitive photo editing, the Capture NX Edit List helps you to track, cancel or add new modifications.

Browser
The completely redesigned Capture NX Browser lets you sort, organize, compare, tag and improve images. Use it to select an image to enhance, rename a series of photographs, or quickly and easily apply a batch process to a group of images.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful, intuitive software!
I was one of the first to download the full-featured Nikon NX software on a trial basis in July 2006. I was immediately hooked. This is a very innovative software program that most photographers who shoot in NIKON RAW format will want.

For those not familiar with RAW format, essentially a RAW format photo file enables the photographer to make post-shot changes to a photo to a much greater extent than is possible when shooting conventional JPEG file shots. So, for example, if one wishes to adjust the exposure on a RAW photo, you can do so and the effect is essentially the same, within the range of a couple of F/stops, as though you had shot the picture that way in the first place (there are exceptions to this beyond the scope of this review). The same is true for many other settings, such as Color Mode (SRGB versus Adobe, for example), White Balance, Sharpening, etc. You can modify some of these to some extent on JPEGs, but when you do there is always a loss of data--while there is no such loss when modifying RAW files. The bottom line is that if you botch a setting shooting RAW files you are much more likely to be able to salvage the photo if you shot RAW, as compared to if you shot JPEG. If you are shooting a wedding or some other critical event where failure is not an option, only a VERY competent expert would not opt to shoot RAW, in my opinion at least.

Capture NX enables the photographer to make very significant enhancements or adjustments to RAW, or to some extent JPEG or TIFF images. The centerpiece of the program is what Nikon calls "Control Points." The program enables one to place control points at various locations on a photograph, and thereby control or modify the color of selected portions of the image. What is even more amazing is that the program also enables the user to make very fine selective adjustments to other effects, such as sharpening or D-lighting, such that only selective parts of an image will be sharpened, for example.

Other programs have offered the ability to do what Nikon Capture NX can do, but in my opinion I have seen no other program that is so intuitive, and so easy for the photographer to learn. Many photographers, especially non-pros like me, want to spend more time taking photographs and less time behind the computer in the "digital darkroom" modifying them. Capture NX is designed for precisely that--it really is very intuitive and easy to learn.

I found the NX user interface to be better than that of Capture 4.4, which NX replaces. Others have differed on this point, but I very quickly became comfortable with the more orderly layout on Capture NX.

There are a few areas in which version 1.0 can stand some improvements in future upgrades. Certain menu options stubbornly return to default settings rather than remain at the user's last (and usually preferred) setting. Despite the good user interface, there are a few areas that will stand some tweaks in future upgrades. In short, NX V1.0 has a few rough edges as first-release versions of software usually do. Nonetheless, in most respects this is a polished product that certainly is ready for "prime time," in my opinion at least.

Like Capture 4.4 before it, Nikon NX want a LOT of memory. A fast CPU and at least 1 GB of RAM is recommended.

Overall, this is a remarkable product that I highly recommend to any photographer who shoots in Nikon's RAW format.

key features but poorly implemented
I am an amateur looking forward to get a deep understanding of digital photography. I decided buying Capture because I consider it to be a MUST for any amateur or professional photographer. The NEF editing capabilities of Nikon Capture 4.4 are astonishing, I tried the Capture 4.4 and then decided buying its successor NX. I own a Nikon D70 with kit 18-70mm lenses. Let me point out what I consider the functions I appreciated the most in Capture NX:

- Color noise reduction! Same as in Capture 4.4, I took pictures for a birthday party and the person I was photographing was a 45 years old female with some wrinkles, all wrinkles vanished setting the color noise reduction intensity to 10. Needless to say, she was extremely happy to see that "I had taken 15 years away from her in the picture".
- All the NEF Camera Adjustment settings where you can regulate WB, sharpness, contrast, compensation and color saturation.
- Last but not least the U point functionality is simply incredible to me where basically users can isolate sections of the picture and modify those sections without affecting the rest e.g. increase color saturation for only the face without affecting the clothing, backgrounds etc. Nikon has done a great job with this one.

All the incredible features offered by Capture are shadowed by the very poor implementation of the software: user-unfriendly and terribly slow. I have a Dell Precision Workstation Dual CPU Xeon 3.2Ghz with 2GB of RAM. Takes me up to a minute waiting whenever I tried changing any parameter, when I go back and check Capture's installation requirements it makes me laugh. I use it to re-touch all my NEF pictures but because of being very slow and unfriendly (I personally find NX more unfriendly than 4.4) will make you spend considerable amount of time even if you own the fastest PC in the market.

Excellent Software-Excellent Usability-uses ALOT of SYTEM RESOURCES!
I have to respectfully disagree with the poor review from Wrestling NX before I give my opinion. The Windows are actually not Windows at all, they are called Palettes and are not supposed to be resized, otherwise anything that needs resizing, IE the image iteself can in fact be sized or viewed in the bird's eye (awesome feature). All of the Palettes can be maximized and minimized, not uncommon with Image Editors really. Lastly, the reason it looks different was not because Nikon wanted to confuse us, but rather because the previous version (awful) was created solely by Nikon, whereas this version was a collaborative effort between Nikon and Nik Software (no relation). Smart move since Camera makers are notorious for making terrible Image Editors.

My opinion on this software is high, spent 30 days with the trial and then bought it I thought it was so good. It is very easy to make a crappy image look wonderful, and a great image look even better. Extremely intuitive, and user friendly palettes; standout features are three-fold

-Control Points as a means to edit specifics. Allows real control over the image and it is very logical to make impactful changes with this feature.

-Edit List to show you what you have done without disturbing the original. Great because you check & uncheck what you have done and see with your eye if it was the correct choice.

-Raw editing is great, no compression so your starting with great source material the way you shot it from the camera. This is really where this software shines.

I would suggest spending a little time with the manual, especially if you are mostly familiar with Photochop. This software is not a chopshop, it is for balancing, and enhancing digital photographs, this is what it is designed and targeted to do, not compete head-to-head with PS. The workflows are great and easy to understand and don't interfere with anything.

My only knock on this software is it requires at a bare minimum 1GB of RAM to flow, if you want it to really move plan on 2GB, it's a hog. But all software is bloated these days (particularly image editors) so I am not removing a star for this.

Buy and enjoy, it will improve your editing experience.



1/17/06- One MAJOR point/drawback I want to make about this software..I advanced myself into shooting and editing in RAW since I learned everything else pretty well in this software. I just want to warn anyone thinking of this software, and please PLEASE!, HEED MY ADVICE HERE. If you don't have a MINIMUM, an absolute MINIMUM! if 2GB of RAM, raw mode will crawl to the point it is so slow and innefficient it becomes not worth it. I have 1GB of RDRAM and I switched back to jpeg mode because it was awful in RAW mode. Would have loved to have had that functionality, but I am not upgrading my entire PC in order to do it. Too bad it is so bloated.