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  1. #1
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    D70 RAW/NEF and user software

    Now what? I bought the Nikon D70, took RAW/NEF shots, need to determine which software to use. The local camera dealer recommends the Capture 4.0 AND Photoshop Elements. Past threads have provided advice, but not necessarily specific to my camera.

    I have about 275 shots from Alaska and ready to process! What should my expectations be regarding the amount of time necessary to review and edit pictures? Any recommendations on basic edits I should always perform?

  2. #2
    Be serious Franglais's Avatar
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    Re: D70 RAW/NEF and user software

    Quote Originally Posted by Suemac
    Now what? I bought the Nikon D70, took RAW/NEF shots, need to determine which software to use. The local camera dealer recommends the Capture 4.0 AND Photoshop Elements. Past threads have provided advice, but not necessarily specific to my camera.

    I have about 275 shots from Alaska and ready to process! What should my expectations be regarding the amount of time necessary to review and edit pictures? Any recommendations on basic edits I should always perform?
    I have Capture 4.0 and Elements. I use Capture to adjust every image for brightness, contrast and colour balance and to transform the image to a JPG for online storage. I use Elements rarely only to manipulate the image in terms of content (cropping, wiping out unnessary detail, etc). As I don't make many saves I usually do this on the JPG.

    I find that for most shots on the D70 I have to use the Brightness histogram to make them lighter and contrastier so I get a full range of tones, sometimes bringing the mid tones up or losing the highlihts deliberately when it looks right. Colour balance is usually OK but occasionally I change it to one of the preset values.

    It probably takes me about a minute to adjust each image. When I've finished doing the adjustments in RAW I leave the system to do the conversion to JPG in batch.

    Charles

  3. #3
    Senior Member OldSchool's Avatar
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    Re: D70 RAW/NEF and user software

    I recommend getting Capture. Just being able to adjust in-camera settings after the shot is huge (sharpening, tone, exposure, white-balance, etc.). Another great tool is Dee-Lite for bringing out shadows or highlights.

    Another great thing about Capture is that it saves your original, and you can save any number of post processed variations -- all in the same file. I find this kind of nifty.

    Note, however, that Capture is a memory hog and slow. But, Nikon just released an update the other week that is MUCH faster then the previous version. If you get Capture, make sure that you download the update from the Nikon web site.

    Feel free to write back with any other questions...
    Tim
    Samurai #17 |;^\

  4. #4
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    Re: D70 RAW/NEF and user software

    Quote Originally Posted by OldSchool
    I recommend getting Capture. Just being able to adjust in-camera settings after the shot is huge (sharpening, tone, exposure, white-balance, etc.). Another great tool is Dee-Lite for bringing out shadows or highlights.

    Another great thing about Capture is that it saves your original, and you can save any number of post processed variations -- all in the same file. I find this kind of nifty.

    Note, however, that Capture is a memory hog and slow. But, Nikon just released an update the other week that is MUCH faster then the previous version. If you get Capture, make sure that you download the update from the Nikon web site.

    Feel free to write back with any other questions...
    Tim
    Thanks for the advice. Have spent some time reading the Capture manual and working with it. What format do you recommend I save the "fixed" photos? To be safe I have created an Alaska original folder and Alaska processed folder. I saved as TIFF for high quality, but got an error when I tried to open them up later.

    What about format for eventual printing? These are Alaska pictures and I definitely want high quality prints and may enlarge a few.

  5. #5
    Senior Member OldSchool's Avatar
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    Re: D70 RAW/NEF and user software

    I keep a backup of the original NEFs, and save the NEFs that I've worked on. Remember, you can back out to the original in any saved NEF. You can also save a number of "final" images in that same NEF (Look up "Markers" I think).

    As far as what to do at print time, that is determined by your printing system (and corresponding color management). I have a local store do my printing (Ritz). Thus, I convert to JPEG and pray that our color profiles are similar so the colors come out. They are happy to retry for free when I'm not happy with the colors.

    BR,
    Tim
    Samurai #17 |;^\

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