A little over a week ago, Nikon had an invite-only event at a photo studio in San Francisco, to introduce the latest version of their Capture NX professional photography software. Lloyd Chambers, of diglloyd.com (http://diglloyd.com/) attended for us and wrote a nice overview of the new software. Lloyd writes really detailed articles on photo equipment and techniques on his site and I'm hoping this is the first of many contributions from him.

Nikon Capture NX 2 Introduction >> (http://reviews.photographyreview.com/blog/nikon-capture-nx-2-%e2%80%94-control-and-quality/)

The other features seem worthless to me; however, GOOD Multi-monitor support? You've got me in. I have two 30" Apple Cinema's and with Capture NX it's a real pain to work with both so I just always end up going to one monitor. Are they finally going to include the image authentication software in Capture? Nikon should realize that very few people will actually buy the authentication software on it's own...

Interesting - my two biggest complaints were the lack of a spotting tool and conflicts with OSX Leopard. Looks like both are taken care of here but I think I'll plan on not being the first guy on the block with it... :)

I haven't used the original Capture NX so I can't speak to its performance. But as a dedicated Adobe Lightroom user, I like that they've added Shadow and Highlight Protection tools. Those are some of the most powerful RAW tools I've used in Lightroom. They're missing in the Olympus Studio 2 software I have to use to convert Olympus E-520 RAW images and I can tell the difference in my converted images. I consider them a necessity now.

Capture NX has been my #1 choice for image editing and NEF conversion, due to its quality, since its release in 2006. I've been there since 1.0, through all the teething problems and such. However, its speed, UI, and in some cases features have been sorely lacking for some time.

I had a list that took up more than two pages of things that I felt needed fixing or improving.

I happened to be awake in time to see the NX2 announcement and grab the trial within minutes of it being posted. It has solved the vast majority of the issues I had with it. Speed isn't just a bit faster...it is leaps and bounds ahead of 1.3.3 on OS X in my testing, both on a Mac Pro 8-core with 10gb ram and on a macbook air.

The new Selection Control Points combined with consistency with selection tools and edit steps has made for a much more powerful editing experience.