Nikon NX2 editing software

[Kenny A]

Hi,

Is anyone using this Nikon software to manage and edit their photos..?
What other software options are used.

Cheers

Cheers

[arthurking83]

Which one? View NX2 or CaptureNX2?

I use ViewNX2 to manage images, set keywording, quick edits and sorting and organising images into their respective folders.
I has geo location capability if you have GPS data enabled for the camera and also the ability to add geo info into raw images via tracklogs or individually on a per image basis via google maps.

Image editing is as basic as it gets, with basically what you can do in camera.
If not for it's ability to handle NEF files as per the camera does, I wouldn't use it. But I shoot raw in camera and it's the best free NEF file converter available.

For more detailed image editing, I use CaptureNX2 which is basically point click and save when using color control points. Other edits I do are a very limited selection of the Nik ColorEfex filters.. basically the tone mapping filter they have. Have tried other filters, but in general not really my style.

It's not anything like Adobe's CS suite, and (once again)it's really only best used for editing NEF images due to the limited tools available.

I also have Lightroom(mainly for editing non Nikon raw files) and they're about comparable but Lightroom has DAM features where CaptureNX really doesn't have the flexibility of using a database system for keywording. You can still set keywords via CNX2, as you can with VNX2 tho.

For DAM I prefer IDImager anyhow... the power of that software for DAM management is unbelievable once you get your head around it.

I've never used LR for DAM management, but I've also never found any way to search for keywording in the images, but that's only because I've never really looked hard enough for it.
IDImager has a great way to search images via keyword searches.
(I believe Nikon should set up ViewNX2 with this kind of DAM management feature .... there's really no use in simply adding keywords if they don't give you an easy way to search for images based on this metadata!!)

As well as Lightroom(which I still have) other software I've tried are CS2(way back), Bibble 5, Capture One and DxO's Optics software but these were all trials of the software.
After them, I still came back to CNX for the ease of use, and the way it handled NEF files and conversion to other formats.

People complain that they find CNX2 slow, but I find it quicker than LR3, even tho I've set up LR as best as I can with cache and access to faster drives for the store of images.
I find completing tasks in CNX2 to be quicker on my PC.

My biggest gripe with CaptureNX2 and ViewNX2 is kind of weird, in that they're both complimentary to each other. That is, if you make any changes to images via VNX2 the alterations are also recognised by CNX2 and CNX2 allows the ability to further edit the images already set in ViewNX2. Easy and as it should be considering that they're both Nikon owned software.
But where the relationship falls down is that if you make any edit via CNX2, ViewNX2 can see the edit, but you can't really do anything to the image(NEF file!!) other than set ratings on it or any more keywording you want to add. You can't even convert the NEF file into another file format.

Sometimes you browse through a folder of images and you may have only one image of 100 edited via CNX2, and all the others edited in VNX2. To convert them all from NEF files to jpgs(as an example) stalls the process because VNX2 can't edit the CNX2 edited file.
I use VNX2 to do these batch file conversions, edits and so on, as it's easy peasy to do .. it's easy in CNX2, but the process requires a few more clicks of the mouse to do.
As I said, I use VNX2 to manage my images but CNX2 to further edit them.

Hopefully Nikon will one day integrate VNX2 and CNX2 together to make them completely seamless!
I doubt it, but as Martin Luther King once said ..... " I have a dream people .... "

[kiwi]

I was about to say only Arthur

[arthurking83]

Whoot! ... wasn't Jacko that used to sing ... " I'm an individual "....

man I hated that song, and him ... and the idea that I'm an individual too! ... I regret having brought up the topic

[Kenny A]

authurking3....gee that was a reply.
Thanks for all the info..I'll continue to use CNX2 and improve my photo editing skills first within this program before I spend any money on a 3rd party program.

Again thanks for a quality reply.