Fiber Fool

One of the natural photography destinations while Amber was here was of course RMNP. This was her 5th visit to Colorado and I had never taken her up there and now we were armed with some new photographic knowledge thanks to the class we had taken. Much of the class was review, but for me it was the first time I was “presented” info on ISO, shutter speed and aperture rather than just reading about it in a book. I have to say things finally sunk in much more.

One of the best things of the class was learning about Nikon’s photo editor - Capture NX2. I’ve been an Adobe Lightroom user since before the official release of 1.0. I haven’t yet upgraded to version 2 though. I had been of the impression that Lightroom, Capture and Aperture all did the same things, but I was quite wrong! Capture is not an organization tool, but a photo editing tool for photographers. Lightroom is also a great quick edit for photographs where most of the editing tools are named for traditional dark room techniques. Where Capture far exceeds Lightroom is in its ability to apply edits to specific areas of an image rather than to the image as a whole. An example of this is the ability to warm skin tones on portraits without giving the background too much warmth. It is a powerful set of tools that allows for very streamlined yet refined edits. I’m in love.

There is a plug-in by the same company that makes Capture, Nik Software, that will give both Photoshop and Lightroom these same tools, however, Viveza retails for $250 (I’ve seen as low as $210) and requires Lightroom 2, upping the bill for me to nearly $350. But, for ~ $130 I can get Nikon Capture NX 2 Full Version. It doesn’t integrate nicely with Lightroom, but there are some other advantages of using Capture in addition to Lightroom if you are a Nikon shooter, such as better noise handling for long exposures. Thankfully, part of the class included a 60-day free trial of Capture so have a bit of time to decide how high up my photography wishlist Capture sits :-)

A note to Amber, most of the above photos have been tweaked in Capture since you last saw them. You were correct - Capture RAWKS!