A great write up Chris.
Toggling between the two versions in your gallery certainly shows the effort paid off. Amazing difference between the two images.

Don

For anyone yet to try NX (and I commend it to anyone not willing/able to pay for CS3, not just Nikon users), it is necesasary to use the correct regional site, (corresonding to where a Nikon product is registered) and regional version of NX to smooth the course.

Thus although the US site http://support.nikontech.com is the richest source for tutorials and Q&A, downloading upgrades from it causes trouble with an EU registration no or NX product key http://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com (probably the same with FarEast).

The EU/US versions are slightly different, so even for free trial, start with the right one. For EU 1.3 trial (or upgrade from 1.2) you need a product registered, which can just be any old Nikkor lens.

Lastly for mac users, use Disk Utility>repair permissions before all installations.

Sign of a happy bunny there Chris.
You picked it up very quickly. Seems no time at all since you got the D80 and started using this prog. :)

Don

I expect you others already know, but Nikon View is now in an NX version and it is far niftier than the browser function within Capture NX.

Aswell as auto download and thumbnail preview of .nefs, it does a slideshow (nef or jpg) at whole pic, 50% or 100% - full screen or half with thumbnails above and includes Picture Control & EV correction for things needing only a quick tweak & as previously high compression for e-mail quickies.

All free :) , but if anyone can tell me how this compares with Aperture at the first sort stage, I would be interested.

I installed ViewNX a few weeks ago and has made my work flow more efficient. Although I knew about ViewNX for some time I dismissed it becasue the images quality was not fit for me to judge whether to keep, process or bin an image.

The thumbnails are much larger than NX and 100% views open instantly. The latest version seems to display fairly high qulaity images probably the embedded NEF JPEG.

When satisfied that an images can be processed a simple right click and choose open in Capture NX calls NX to open the image.

I was using ViewNX when I visited Don a few weeks ago so he has seen it in action.

Lastly for mac users, use Disk Utility>repair permissions before all installations. - QUOTE FROM CHRIS ABOVE - Message 102

For ALL Mac users use Disk Utility> Repair Permissions before & AFTER all installations.

Chris - I use mainly Aperture, but after reading through this thread I will try and compare it with View and Capture NX (both of which I have) for a week or so and report back - I've always fought shy of Nikon Software cos their Mac stuff usually sucked and they got into trouble with Apple some time ago for playing with system kernels causing instability in the early versions of OSX.

I have found NX to operate fine under Tiger and Leopard - no problems at all.

Make sure it is the latest NX version of view you have Andy. When I first used Capture NX, I did get a lot of crashes, but as reported this was from a mix of EU product key and US upgrades. On going to 1.3, I didn't appreciate that 'Picture Control' appears to be designed for D3 & D300 and although it works for nefs from other cameras, it does slow things down if hunting for non-existent data - that became clearer from dialogues in ViewNX.

Lastly, would only be a problem on your older machine, but definitely no 'Classic' running - that is where below OS problems rear their heads.

Hi folks, Just re-read the entire thread, and starting to get to grips with Capture NX 1.3.1. I've found a book that has been a great help - Nikon Capture NX by Ben Long ISBN-13 978-0-321-48999-9 Pub. Real World.
It covers version 1.1 but there is enough in it to get me started and point me in the right direction. My point about Apple and Nikon goes back a couple of years. Apple found that Like SYMANTEC Anit Virus, Nikon software changed things in the root of the OS that it was not allowed to change. For a while Apple withdrew its formal support from Nikon Developers. I understand things are back to normal which is why Capture 1.3.1 runs well now. I'll get back to running them in parallel and hopefully post results soon.

Guess what? APERTURE 2 has arrived - Everything now on hold while I sort it out