6 replies to this topic

[Laurie in Maine]

Hi!

I have a Nikon D5500. Trying to figure out what some of the editing sliders do using ViewNX-i. Pictures to date were shot in jpeg fine so White Balance & Exp. Compensation settings are not enabled, I now understand.

 

Mostly landscape/nature photos so I clicked the Nature dot.

Should I routinely check the Axial Color Aberration and auto Lateral boxes?

 

I have been straightening the horizon by "pretending" to crop near it for the straight line to go by. Is there grid feature for this?

 

I go fairly easy on the color booster but have been posting blog entries with side-by side before and after pictures to tell the difference with my beginner efforts and liking the changes even though I was skeptical while working on them.

 

What is D-Lighting HS?

What does the Highlight/Shadow Protection sliders do? (I've been moving them a little but not sure it's doing anything!)

Many more questions to come but so thankful to have found a forum specific to Nikon.

Laurie in Maine

[Laurie in Maine]

  

 

Before and after pictures with goal of lightening up shoreline rocks for a little more detail. Still figuring out the camera and these were last summer, probably on auto.

Experimenting with Nikon's free software and about to put the camera settings back on Raw and giving that another try. Soon.

[Merco_61]

D-lighting HS stands for Dynamic lighting High Speed. It is a quick-fix to make the dynamic range more or less fit into the available colour space.

 

Highlight/Shadow protection lightens the shadows to avoid underexposure and darken highlights to avoid overexposure. The effect is subtle, especially when working with 8-bit files.

 

Straightening tilted horizons isn't among the ViewNX strengths. The other free editor from Nikon (Capture NX-D) is much more capable. You can use it just like ViewNX-i to convert a .NEF to .jpg with all in-camera settings active or you can change things before locking things in by exporting, but with much more detailed control over what happens. If you, for example, want to straighten a photo, you just activate the straighten tool and draw a line you want to be horizontal or vertical and the photo straightens accordingly.

 

If you read back in the Editing exercise... minichallenge threads, you will find most of my interpretations made in Capture NX-D with some free NIK filters added as a last step. I tried to document my settings, at least most weeks.

[Laurie in Maine]

I found the editing exercises and have been reading through them... looks like a useful challenge!

 

I actually did download the Capture NX-D this morning  but hadn't opened it yet...there's a grid! Except the 1st photo I decided to practice on was straight for a change

The tools seem different, so it feels like taking a couple of steps backwards. Once I have something in raw to edit it will be interesting to try again. I need to find some useful video tutorials. YouTube has an overwhelming number of bad ones to wade through!

 

This is the original - I scrapped the edit I tried... (I'm spoiled by knitting forums that resize photos for us   This was on my facebook page. Is there a tool to drag the picture smaller? Am I breaking rules with a pic this big?)

 

[Merco_61]

Adam only asks that we post web-sized, there are no absolute limits. I use a 1500x900 bounding box on export, which will give screen-filling photos without a need to scroll to see the full photo in Safari on the pre-retina macbook pro's screen.

[Laurie in Maine]

I appreciate your replies... Thank you!

 

I've edited about 20 pictures this week and I thought I had saving them worked out. When you hit "save as" when you have an edited picture the way you like, is it saving the "original as" or the new one? I then hit "convert files" and that seems to renumber the edited one by counting up each in succession... "lau_0346_08" and leaves the original without the _08.

 

Is there any way I might mistakenly overwrite the original?

These are still my jpeg fine so is converting them actually needed?

 

edited to add resized pic #practice!

[Merco_61]

A good idea when working with jpegs is to start the edit by saving as as this will make a duplicate file to work on. Save as won't let you overwrite an existing file without prompting. If you omit this step, I think it will perform an ordinary save when you go to another file, but it might just be that it writes the changed settings to a sidecar file. I don't ordinarily use ViewNX or shoot in jpg, so I am not certain about how it handles this situation.

 

Convert files adds a version number if the file name already exist in the destination folder, otherwise it won't. Converting files gives the option of resizing and changing the compression ratio, so it is exactly what you want when exporting a file for a specific use.

 

My own workflow is a bit different as I don't use Transfer to copy files to the computer and don't use ViewNX-i at all.

I start by ingesting the files into PhotoMechanic, with a copy to a NAS.

I then group files that need the same set of keywords together using the Color classes and add the group keywords and other standard IPTC information. I then add individual keywords where needed.

The next step is to select files for editing using the star ratings. These are added to the folder for the date, opened in Capture NX-D and edited as needed. They are then exported to the original folder as .tiff in full resolution.

I then make .jpg distribution copies in PhotoMechanic with different colour spaces and resolutions for different usages.