As I mentioned in my previous post, the Nikon Capture NX-D
is Nikon’s new freeware replacement for the venerable Nikon Capture NX2 program. Capture NX2 was a full-featured photo editing
program created by NIK software in collaboration with Nikon. When Google purchased NIK, the collaboration
stopped and Nikon had to scramble to produce a replacement product. The result was NX-D. Capture NX2 is no longer supported by Nikon.
CNX2 was the workhorse program for many Nikon IR
photographers because the most Nikon cameras cannot set a custom white balance for
infrared light. They just don’t have
enough adjustment to white-balance these images. You can check out my white balance post for more information.
Now, let’s get to the real purpose of this post -- describing
how to set a white balance and perform a channel swap using the new NX-D
program.
Step 1. Open your RAW
image in NX-D. As you examine the user
interface, you will notice that most of the editing functions are arranged on
the right side of the screen.
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Step 2. White Balance. |
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Step 3 White Balance |
Step 4. The cursor will become an eyedropper and you can click on a point that should be gray in the image. If you have included a gray card in the image, click on that. To sample a larger area, click and drag to choose a larger area to sample. Compared with CNX2 which could sample the entire image, the NX-D marquee is quite small. You can use the Fine Adjustment and Tint sliders to dial in the appropriate amount of white balancing.
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Step 4. White Balance |
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Step 5 Channel Swap |
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Step 6. Channel Swap |
Step 7. This is what the sky looks like when the arrow is moved upward.
I usually export the image as a 16-bit TIFF file at step 5
and do the rest of my post-processing in Photoshop. On rare occasions, I will perform a channel
swap in NX-D and then export to a TIFF.
I really don’t do any photo editing in NX-D.
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Step 7. Channel Swap Complete |
I hope you find this explanation helpful.
I am totally grateful for this explanation of post processing of ir photos. I have spent weeks and tried so many suggestions of different tutorials, and yours hit the nail on the head. I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks so much for this detailed explanation.
ReplyDeleteI have used Capture nx and then gradually moved on Lightroom. The only advantage of this programm - controlled point. But Nikon has updated the program and the technology in the new version is not supported. So i think of macphun tools or Lightroom as a good alternative.
ReplyDelete