MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Off Topic => Topic started by: beisea on September 27, 2006, 16:23
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I have been using Nikon Capture to do my raw workflow for a few years, and it's been pretty smooth.
Now I just upgraded from D100 to D80, I have to use a new workflow, at this time, I am not sure which one will give me the best workflow in terms of efficiency and quality, I am considering those:
Nikon Capture NX,
Adobe Lightroom Beta ( wonder what the final cost will be next year, but sounds like an exciting product )
Anyone has some experience with those two?
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well i am pretty happy with adobe lightroom. it is good for choosing and comparing photos, and has lots of options for editing the raw files, but it is still very slow when it comes to editing the files. Printing is also really great with lightroom, much better than photoshop.
It depends on what i am doing though, sometimes I just open the 5 or 6 files i am comparing directly into photoshop, then just open the 1 or 2 i like using the adobe raw converter.
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I use Nikon Capture NX first to open the RAW file ... adjust exposure slightly if needed, change white balance if necessary, tweak the image with 'd-lighting' or with colour control points (amazing facility!), maybe do a bit of colour boost, crop and deal with noise (again, if necessary) and save as a TIF file.
Then I use Photoshop on the TIF fle to clone out dust spots, keyword and uprez (for Alamy images). Then I save again as TIF (for Alamy) and covert to JPG for the others.
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I'm using Apple's Aperture (and impatiently waiting for the 1.5 upgrade due "any day")
Many of my changes to levels, saturation, rotation (horizon), cropping, sharpening, etc are done in Aperture. When I need to, i let Aperture export to Photoshop Elements and i use neatimage for noise and sometimes some other filters. Then closing PE puts me back to Aperture where my photos reside (even the .psd).
Then I keyword and drop a shortcut into the 1/2 dozen different folders to do exports to the micros.
So, many are comparing Aperture to Lightroom and the answer is pick one - I am staying with Aperture because it works very well for me and i've got time and money invested in it. I haven't tried Lightroom because it just doesn't make sense for me to spend the time looking at 2 tools when i own one. I've seen several reviews lately tho that like Aperture over Lightroom - but then again if you don't have a mac in the first place it won't matter.
Update:
Just found this comparison on the two products:
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?email&NewsID=6211
it says neither one is 'the' best :)
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Thanks for the feedback.
Yesterday I played with Capture NX and Lightroom, both are not as intuitive as I like to have, but it seems NX has more raw adjustment than lightroom, maybe a little easier, I will run some comparison to find out which one will work out for me in terms of workflow.