A while back when the D2X was announced there was an issue with Nikon encoding their white balance info and making it proprietary so that Photoshop ACR was not able to read it properly. People were pretty upset about it at the time. As a D70 user it didn't affect me so I don't remember all the details.
I haven't heard any complaints about this with the D80. Has Nikon reversed course with the D200 and D80 or was there a technical solution that allowed Adobe and others to sidestep the issue?
As a followup, what do all of you use for processing NEFs? I just upgraded to the new Nikon NX, and I'm having difficulty with the new GUI. It doesn't seem anywhere as intuitive as the old Capture 4 was--what a waste of $150. I felt I got better results with Capture 4 than photoshop. But lately I've been going straight to photoshop. The program is very slow (even after opening the NEF), the windows are difficult to open/move around without blocking the image, and its hard to find certain functions. What do you think? Is there a quality disadvantage to using CS rather than Capture with the D80 due to NEF encoding?
PhotoMechanic is a great program. I used it until recently and changed to aperture, but Aperture is Mac only for now.
I think there were two issues about the white balance info. One was making the information a proprietary format that might get changed at any time and which was not readable by the photographer who created the image. The other was whether cracking the format would be interpreted as a violation of the DCMA by Nikon, where they might go after Adobe for figuring out how to read the file. There was some press release confirming that Nikon was OK with Adobe (and I assume other 3rd party oproducts such as Bibble) reverse-engineering the file format so that their RAW decoders could read the file correctly.
I'm sure a google search would find the information.
Rinjani
I'm not sure why anyone would buy capture, not really worth the money if you have PS. I like Nikon View and they have Picture Perfect out now but you have to buy that and it does not do batch conversion but organizes better than Nikon view. Nikon view is free and is very similar to breezebrowser. Breezebrowser is cheap and a little better and and faster than nikon view. I am not familiar with capture but I bet when you install that just nikon view the nikon raw converter takes over the photoshop converter and it is most likely the issue you have. If you have the very basic raw converter without the tonal, hue, saturation contrast and many other adjustments in PS than that is your problem. You have to go into the photoshop plug in directory and remove the nikon CYMK and NEF plugin. Then re-start your computer and the adobe raw converter will take over. I have no issues with my d200.
If you have the very basic raw converter without the tonal, hue, saturation contrast and many other adjustments in PS than that is your problem. You have to go into the photoshop plug in directory and remove the nikon CYMK and NEF plugin. Then re-start your computer and the adobe raw converter will take over. I have no issues with my d200.
Thanks Photobeat. This is very valuable advice as after my system crashed and I re-installed CS I did have this problem. Very frustrating as I knew I had more options in RAW before but couldn't figure out why they weren't there. A few hours on Adobe's help files and I figured it out. No, I'm past this issue.
My problem now is the performance of Capture. Maybe this was a waste after all and I should just use CS all the time. I did prefer using Capture 4 to CS at least for RAW processing then to swich over to CS for levels adjustmewnts etc. I also liked how Capture launched CS automatically. Unfortunately, I lost my password for Capture and Nikon can't find my payment record so I just bought a full version of NX.
