Nikon NX-Studio

Dicky J

Dicky J

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Richard
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I've recently got a new Nikon Z fc and found that Lightroom can't open its RAW files yet, so I downloaded Nikon NX Studio and now I'm a bit depressed.
I have found that NX-Studio renders my RAW files better that Lightroom for my existing Nikon Z7 camera. It looks so much better to me that it is pushing me to use NX-Studio instead of Lightroom. I know that it won't do everything that Lightroom will do and that it is a bit clunky sometimes but the end result looks better to me most of the time. I like my workflow as it is and I don't want to change but I'm left wondering. 10 stars to Nikon for producing such a great FREE software and it's only on version 1.01.
 
I've always found that Nikon's own software has done a better job with Nikon files than Adobe's has, and NX Studio is slicker than their previous offerings. For more complex edits, you can buy a permanent Affinity Photo licence for the price of 5 months of an Adobe subscription, and just load the tiffs from NX...
 
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Richard, I like the way that NX-Studio renders NEF files too but it's hardly surprising that it looks better than Lightroom (or anything else for that matter) as only Nikon have access to the correct algorithms needed to interpret the raw data. Every other raw converter is just making their best guess.

The closest I have seen recently is DxO PhotoLab 4 and that is likely because Nikon's previous Capture-NX software was written by DxO's predecessors - their name escapes me.

If NX-Studio could do some of the things I like to use (e.g. panoramas) then I would seriously consider it as an alternative to LR. Maybe that will come in a future itteration :)
 
Capture NX (& NX 2) was written by Nik Software, authors of the well-known plugin collection, before they were bought out by Google, who then sold on the plugins to DxO. More recently, Capture NX-D was built on Silkypix - I don't know if they are still involved with Studio. But the quality of Nikon's conversions pre-dates the NX days, going back to Nikon Capture and Nikon View, which I think were written before Nik got involved. I used to use Nikon View for raw conversions before getting the original Capture NX with my D300. Nikon licences a software development kit (SDK) that appears to include the core raw conversion stuff, but not many companies seem to be interested. I believe both Adobe and DxO have their own ideas about raw conversion.

What Nikon does very well is to profile their cameras carefully to get exactly the colours they want, and the output of their software matches their in-camera jpegs quite closely. Everyone else (or at least everyone who doesn't license the SDK) has to do this themselves, with a greater or lesser degree of success. Adobe's 'camera matching profiles' are their version of this. Personally, I think Capture One does a better job here, or did the last time I compared them. The Nikon software can also read things like the Picture Controls that other converters generally ignore. A certain amount of NEF metadata (like 'as shot' white balance) is encrypted, which there was quite a fuss about back in 2005. The encryption was quickly cracked (open source decryption code is in dcraw and ExifTool), but Adobe were worried about the legal implications of doing this without authorisation, and eventually came to an agreement with Nikon, licensing (AFAIR) the official decryption code, but not the rest of the SDK (they didn't want to do raw conversion Nikon's way, on Nikon's terms). Incidentally, one of the decryption keys in many versions of the NEF format is your camera's serial number; delete this with an exif editor and the 'as shot' white balance will become unreadable.
 
That is very interesting. I'm trying a new workflow now to see how it goes. I use NX Studio to import from my camera and do the initial sift to delete the photos that I don't want to keep, then export them as Tiffs and the import the Tiffs into my Lightroom 1TB storage plan.
 
Capture NX / NX2 was brilliant, then it ceased being updated to the latest bodies and NX-D appeared which was not a patch on the original versions, my initial thoughts are that this latest NX-Studio has a feel of the original NX, I am looking forward to giving it an extended try ... thanks for the heads up Dicky I was unaware this version existed
 
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