NX 2 discussion & (hopefully) tips
 

following the flurry when it hit the download list, I have now changed (would like to have said upgraded) my mac powerbook to OS 10.4.11 which in turn enables NX 2.

Having run my 1st trial on a PC, I am disappointed that the interface is, if anything, even worse on mac than PC. Seems to assume one of those squarish monitors that you can lose 1/3 of height of on tool bars. Although some still float, they can no longer be re-shaped. As for the grey on grey sliders, polite words fail me, likewise on some of the near microscopic sub-menu text.

But it is evidently a more potent beast and really more of a rework than an upgrade. The modestly called 'quick fix' range, which I thought would be part of the browser toys ported over from View NX, is really seriously effective.

There also seems to be a change of emphasis from use of 'control points'/upoint technology to more serious selection and mask function enabling full range of tools to be deployed very selectively. I use to find upoint tweaks that looked fine on screen could show up and spoil prints. However, still too early to compare with what one could achieve with brush selection & full tool-set.

It is at present also possible to run 1.3 alongside for comparison (poor old computer, like taking a very old dog for a walk he enjoyed in his youth).

Will be very interested to see what further tweaks are made before it becomes more than a demo and has anyone (either of you??) found a route for feedback on it?

Keep up the good work on reporting your findings Chris.

I have been, and still am, tinkering in the workshop and dare I say it not taking many pics at all :eek: :rolleyes: . Any that I have have been easily handled by NX1.01, so I have not eaten into the 60 day trial period of NX2 by installing it yet.
A few screen grabs of the new interface would be interesting.

No idea on the feedback route though. If I remember correctly the first upgrade from NX1 v1.00 to v1.01 was about 6 months from release.

Don

NX2screen.jpg

A shot taken using flash in a situation when I really hate the cold colour resulting.

Top of screen right: 'Version' now allows one to toggle between original, last saved and current - very useful
Next down bottom of the 'Quick fix' pane. It includes the Master Luminosity (showing) & saturation as in LCH; then exposure comp (previously in RAW adjust) and Highlight & Shadow 'protection', very powerful adjuster algorithms & simple 'contrast'.

As the shape of the curve I have put on the master luminosity shows, I usually find something more precise than universal 'contrast' fix is needed - its the contrast within particular sub-sections of a pic that usually matter, not overall.

As the hard white light from flash was about the last thing I wanted, this is adjusted for the whole pic in 1st 'colour balance' adjustment. Various corrections made for subsidiary things far too bright or attention diverting. The High pass is confined to the small chess figures using the new selection/mask tool, but not convinced it is any better than brush for soft objects.

Finally, crop - this is best done much earlier, but unless you turn on a preference to keep everything live, for which they warn a high processor speed is advised, adjustments turn themselves off if you go back to 'quick fix'. This used to happen in 1.3, but can now be avoided by guys like Stephen with a fast desktop twin.

I have arranged the screen for my 15", ie I can't afford to lose anything. The tool pallettes now only float or dock, no minimise, but the vertical panes are left as in 1.3, confusing for newcomers I should think, but then the whole thing is probably a non-starter for them until some new tutorials come through. Tool settings appear above the tool bar, hence a space is left for it. On Portrait orientation pics, I shove these overlapping something, on mac half off screen possible. This is a huge down-grade for me, as previously the boxes were squarish and easier to place and temporarily minimisable to just the drag-bar.

The interface is identical for PC except that on PC the menu bar items are very small and way over to the left. Note semi-invisible grey on grey sliders, one of the most stupid new items, in fact a candidate for all time wooden spoon

Cheers Chris,

I saved your screen so I can have a good look later.

Don

The highlight protection is useful and seems to be better than hightlights in D-lighting of NX. However I believe its based on control points and some halo-ing can occur when used in extreme circumstances.

Control points seems better with greater separation when tones and colours are similar to the one working an adjustment.

I think its a bit quicker due to its refined user interface.

Perhaps we now have that NX was supposed to be, not that NX was poor in any respect.

I have tried using NX2 on an old Pana FZ7 pic, ie .jpg original. The only thing you don't get that you would from a Nikon .nef image is exposure compensation (and tweaks needed for newest Nikons). The pictogram in the 'easy fix' section is similar to levels in that it allows adjustment of over/under-exposure but without changing colour balance. The shadow 'protection' (= recovery in English) is still very good.

So anyone with half a mind to try an alternative to CS3 or new to post-processing altogether might well try it out while its on 60 day free offer.

For acclimatisation I recommend that if more than 'quick fix'is needed, control+B gets the colour balance menu whith sliders on blue-yellow, red-green & magenta-cyan axes and also includes further contrast and brightness correction. If only required for part of the image, choose 'selection control point' from the tool bar with shift key pressed down. This is roughly equivalent to selecting using a 'magic wand' tool but just works better if there is a strong colour boundary.

You can 'save as' .nef despite the original not being one and preserve your first rough efforts to fine tune later without getting a massive file as when using .psd. However you need say 10GB free space on the hard drive for NX to use as cache or it all slows right down.

Do ask questions here

can now get upgrade from 1.3 for £80 or total package for £130. Use correct Nikon site for your part of the world to avoid access key problems.

You can also use Nikon customer support system (after registering) to give feedback that will be forwarded to the programmers.

I think mine is to general effect that the mac version is so out of line with OS10 interface and other interface problems that I will revert to 1.3 if is not improved by the time my trial period expires. PC version is identical, but maybe you have a nearly square screen with room to waste on tool boxes you don't want and have a lower expectation of interface clarity.

The selection control point ('star' new item) may work well on pics with strongly coloured and delineated man-made objects, but seems pretty vague on landscapes and worse on seascapes. But, in the absence of tutorial, I will experiment more before giving up. Ditto auto-retouch (=clone/stamp) only useful for eg out-of-focus background, not realy upto serious use.

That leaves shadow protection (=recovery) as only serious advance against a lot of backward steps. I dare say that on a much faster machine there would be some improvement to see there.

Does it look £80 worth to you Stephen?

Thanks Chris for letting us know we can now upgrade from the trial.

I dont think the application is that different only the user interface has changed and made it much easier for me to edit the type of photos I specialise in.

I editted a few shots yesterday and found that I wasn't hunting around the screen for this and that menu. Everything was there for me. I also seemed to have more energy and patience to do more.

Is it worth £80 - NO!

Nonetheless I shall be upgrading, benefits are there but not worth paying for.

Warning - after editing some difficult pics in both 1.3 and 2, I have decided to go back to 1.3 on grounds of final quality as well as previous doubts.

However NEFs edited in NX2 do not come through with editing done in 'Quick fix' (and maybe other new tools). Although the QF pictogram looks like the LCH>'master luminosity', it acts independently. IMO, not as well, partly as it is smaller and partly as it does not have numeric corner windows giving exact values of edge sliders. LCH is the function I use most and can't afford to lose its quality.

Two days playing with NX2 and now I am well impressed.
Start of day 1 was a bit of a nightmare as I did not think the interface was too intuitive, and I'm not really good at ploughing through help files for each step I wanted to do, so I have tended to crash around. Trial and error job.

Perhaps it would be a good plot if we had a few explanitory screen grabs of various menu elements.

I will leave LCH to you Chris as I use selective curves so not up to speed on that one.

For the Bald Eagle shot I used control points and the mask function, so maybe I will start by doing a few screen grabs of that one.

Don