The Revolution has begun: work your RAW by zone with Nikon Capture NX 1.0.1!

It is with much excitement and great expectations that I installed Nikon Capture NX, because the promises of this very awaited software are big. In particular most interesting which is to work its images RAW by zones.

“The Points of control of color enable you to choose and isolate a zone from this image in order to improve it in a less time compared with other tools of image editing. In little time, you can select and use any Point of control of color to modify the color, the luminosity, saturation, the red, the green, blue, heat and contrast within each given zone. Each Point of control appears on the image and can be easily moved from one point to another, for a precise positioning in order to obtain the desired effect. Cursors enable you to adjust the effect of the points of control in the zones selected by these points of control. The ordering of slip, the point and the cursor is very easy to use, and offers an effect at the same time very powerful and creative! “

We will come back to that later… The last born from Nikon has also as an ambition to help you to also treat your files JPEG or TIFF… And not only the NEF files coming out of your Nikon camera! given that specific features only apply to NEFs.

The first approach is a bit disturbing, but quickly you find yourself at ease. Nikon dropped the colored GUI from Capture 4 to get back to a rather sober user interface (which I like). The important thing is not the look but what one can do with!

Nikon Capture NX thus is particularly interesting because it is the first of all the derawtisers to make it possible to apply adjustments by zone to your RAW image.

You heard me right, to lighten a face, to emerge a shade, to obscure a corner of sky has finally become possible on a RAW. And that changes it all!

With such a projection, one can thus consider that Nikon Capture NX is the very first representative of what one will call: the second generation of derawtisers. Software which will make it possible to make true final improvement on the images 12 bits rough of sensor, in a very broad space color…

Also, Photoshop has the astonishing capacity to import RAW as dynamic objects within a file PSD… Yes! That enables you to make selection (and even to memorize them, to modify them) in order to apply copies of adjustments by zone to your image RAW… object_dynamiqueImage RAW which will thus remain editable constantly: double-click and a window of Raw Camera opens with the top workspace Photoshop.

Carry out your adjustments, close again and you are back in Photoshop. Camera Raw thus also allows this prowess to work on the RAW by zones, but while cheating a little… Since it needs the copies of adjustment from Photoshop to reach that point, which does not complicate the operation badly! It is thus not completely similar, moreover each selection which you memorize (you don’t have to) weighs down your file of a third of the weight of the initial image.

Needless to say that this method is reserved to the advanced users…

With the “Control Points”, Nikon Capture NX thus proposes a method of selection which resembles the method “beach of colors” of Photoshop, but completely different and innovative… It is much more intuitive, faster and lighter! In a word accessible to people who are unaware of all the Alpha layers of Photoshop! Let’s add that the price of NX is six to seven times less than a Photoshop license by the way…

When you select a zone you can change the size before applying adjustments to it: luminosity, contrast, dyed, saturation, red, green, blue, temperature (details in the floating window)… By multiplying the points of control you can refine precisely my image zone by zone.

And one discovers a new way of working rather different: it is very intuitive! Try this astonishing experiment, take one of your old images JPEG, work it in Capture NX (with points of control) and at the end: record your work… in NEF! And yes, the NEF is not any more a format reserved for RAW files from the Nikon camera.

That leads to the next question… are we perhaps on the verge of a technological revolution which will transform the image processing?? It is very much probable. It seems to me that the next generation of software will not work on a pixel to pixel base but will also only record a pixel to pixel alteration! The goal being to preserve our hard disks of clogging…

This change will require to give up the existing file format like PSD, TIFF and other JPEG, in order to pass to new formats (allowing to record these instruction). Like the DNG (who stores data in a XMP file)…

What an exciting era we live in!! The revolution has definitely begun and Nikon is leading it!