+ Very easy to do selective edits, no matter if the selection is simple or very complicated.
+ Excellent quality in the conversion of Nikon Raws
+ Excellent price
+ Runs in Windows XP to Windows 7, also in Apple Leopard operating systems

- Initial version were quite buggy, crashed often
- Needs powerful hardware for a nimble operation , read more than 4gb, 64 bit windows, better than dual core processor.
- Batch processing: I have seen reviews that it is not up to lightroom ease of use.
- Cloning tool: needs more freedom of choice for the user.
- Saving the work sometime can take a long time.

Very powerful editing software for Nikon RAW images, can also process jpg and tiffs

I use it on a laptop with windows xp 4gb of ram (only 3 usable by windows) dual core processor

The main feature I'll say is the u-point technology which allows to add a control point to select specific areas of an image, this can be for example, the leaves of a tree, and apply the adjustments needed only to that particular selection, the area not selected will remain unaffected by the adjustment. The control points allow to do very complicated selectionsas easily as a very simple one without the use of layers.

The adjustments available are any of the common ones for lightness, contrasts, curves, color, temperature, color balance , sharpening, blurring, etc ...

A particular feature that I use often when working with the Nikon Raws is the camera adjustments, for example if a picture was taken with vivid, this can be changed to any other color setting available in the particular camera model with which the photo was taken, this also includes all the selections of each particular mode.

All edits in a raw file are non destructive, and if you happen to start with a jpg or tiff and want to keep t non destructive editing just save your work in the format for raw, then all editing to the jpg or tiff will also remain non destructive

There are still features that I do not use, batch processing I have barely used it to copy adjustments of one photo to a group of photos, the result can be saved in any of the formats supported.

Compared to a complicated edit using layers using capture nx2 is a breeze, certainly photoshop can be more powerful but for the type of editing I do it is sufficient.

One improvement i like to see is a more flexible cloning tool, it does not allow the user to select the area that will use to clone from , and often it picks the wrong set of pixels for the cloning, the user has to play with the size of the brush and direction in order to do a decent cloning. I have used cloning and healing in lightroom and I like it better.

The folders have a way to classify the photos , sort of lightroom, but I have not used it enough , although I heard people who can really use it due to the need to process a large volume of photos do not particularly like this functionality.

I have converted some raw files in both lightroom and capture nx2, I found the results from capture nx2 slightly better.

Color efex pro is a plugin that can be added to capture nx2, a very powerful and useful set of effects.

Wish they would support HDR Effex, at this time it is not supported in capture nx2.

Whenever nik software releases an update it is installed quickly and seamlessly, every update has added stability and better performance.

I have not done any printing so I do not have an opinion regarding this.

For my use , low volume of images per session, and for being so easy to use, except for the cloning tool, I give it 4 stars.

Customer Service

Called to retrieve my license when I had to replace the hard disk of my computer, easy and fast service.

Similar Products Used:

Lightroom , Paintshop pro, GIMP

U-point selection
D-lightning
Changes to on camera image processing settings
Show focus point
Very good when resizing images, I see no reduction in image quality

Intermittent crashes on heavily modified images.
Batch process performance
Can not add text or frames to the photos

Simple yet very powerful specially if working on NEF files.
It does quite nicely also on TIF and JPG files.

The u-point technology allows to simply click on an area and it keeps the changes to it, if it spills over to something you do not want modified - because tonality is quite close- then use the same u-point to tell it what should not be modified. Further tuning of the selection with the brush is simple, the software shows and overlay of what will be modified , or a B&W mask, all selection points can have different opacity %.

I never have to use the lazo tool.

All changes are non destructible and you can also have multiple version of the image saved in the same file.

If the photo was taken with autofocus, you can see what spot(s) in the image were selected by the focus system. If using manual focus then it doesn't show wat spot was used for focus.

Another neat feature is the ability to modify the camera processing settings after the fact, I'm talking about the program used to take the photo, like, neutral, standard, vivid, d-lightning, sharpening, etc ...

It also has the ability to correct lens distortion, color fringe, vignette, but i do not use this often so I don't have much of an opinion on this.

I also like seeing all the metadata saved in the file (EXIF).

Batch processing , say to convert a number of Raw files to JPG, can be slow.

Images can be rated, and displayed in the browser window by rating or by file type.

I'm currently at version 2.2.4, started with 2.2

2.2 had some performance problems, freezing or crashing specially if there were significant modifications with the erase tool, or to much brush used to delimit the correction areas. I think it has to do with the amount of memory available in windows.
2.4 has crashed on me , but less often and performance seems to be better.

I'm running on Windows XP with 3gb of RAM

Customer Service

not used

Similar Products Used:

Lightroom

Ease of use and powerful editing tools.

N/A

I'm not exactly sure why Jon (see previous post) was having major difficulty using this product, I've been using the product on Windows XP/Vista/7 without a hint of any of the problems he described. His situation seems unique (possibly a configuration problem with his own PC) and does not appear to reflect the experiences of most Capture NX users.

Customer Service

Never needed to contact them.

Similar Products Used:

Photoshop CS2, DxO Optics Pro

Image quality is still better than processing in Photoshop, but its quicker for me to save 50 files as DNGs, and then batch run an action on them in Photoshop (extrememly time consuming) than to process 5 files in NX2.

If you can't process files, you can't do anything, this software is useless.

NX2 is worse than NX.

I've had nothing but problems with this software;

It takes a couple minutes at least to start up, and then its a gamble as to whether it will run or not.

If I can manage to get an image to open, 9 times out of 10 when I go to make changes the image rotates and distorts, and I have to continuously re-rotate the image.

Then, when I go to save the image, 9 times out of 10 I get "engine error, could not save your file".

Zoom dosn't resize the window you're operating in, so you have to double handle all the files.

Please Nikon, just bring back Capture 4, fast, reliabel, fantastic quality images, simple programe, easy to understand , easy to build your own workflow, etcetc, but primarily, IT WORKS.

Professional photographers who want to use a D3 or D3x have no program that works with these files, it's a huge waste of time trying to get the software working, the workflow is so slow that you are quicker using Photoshop, but of course then you sacrifice the beautiful image quality that you went and bought your D3s for in the first place.

Its the buggiest software I've ever seen.

When I went to Nikon asking them how to fix it, they told me, "huh, It should work.", finally I managed to get someone to tell me that you can go into the utilities and use the reguistry sweeper to try to clean it up, but even thisdosnt work - it says that the floppy disc is write protected... which is useless - its a DVD...

This softyware seriously compromises Nikons reputation for quality.

Customer Service

Well meaning but dishonest.

Similar Products Used:

Photoshop
Lightroom
Photo mechanic

Adaptability to various needs in one photo. Enhances the creative urge without becoming the image itself. No "photoshopping" here.

For what I do, there have been no weaknesses. It is not Photoshop but I and most photographers don't need Photoshop.

I was looking for an editor that would enable discrete changes in my photographs. This product completely fulfills that need. If I have a dark area in a photo and an area that is too bright, I can lighten (add light to the underlying data set) shadows and I can darken bright areas.

Of course solid black or solid white is not going to change because there is no underlying data but if the image has data points, this software can help manipulate them. It is the most like dodging and burning I have seen since I did my own photo printing 30 years ago.

Customer Service

Not used, no intention of using.

Similar Products Used:

Older versions of Photoshop, ACDSee, GIMP.