I’ve used a few different image editor programs over the past 5 years that I have been serious about digital photography. I am constantly on the lookout for a new technique or a more efficient workflow. I have been through more tutorials, books, and podcasts then I can count. So I decided to use this post to talk about what I think is important in an image editor and offer some advice to help others make the right decision on choosing the editor that meets their needs and falls within their budget.
The contenders are Photoshop, Lightroom, and Capture NX 2. Actually, the first image editor I worked with was Paintshop Pro X. It was actually a decent editor for basic stuff but when it comes to serious editing, I didn’t consider it to be up to the task. That was too long ago for me to recount the exact reasons, so don’t ask. For this post, we are talking about Photoshop, Lightroom, and Capture NX 2.
The things that I consider important in any image editor that I use are the following.
1. Working with Raw files
2. Nondestructive Edits
3. The ability to make global adjustments
4. The ability to make local adjustments
5. The ability to change saturation, contrast, do curves adjustments, preferably with separate color channels
6. Sharpening and softening
7. A decent Printing model
Those are the features. Notice I didn’t say “layers” or “masking”. You use those features to achieve nondestructive edits and local adjustments. So those features specifically are not required, as long as I do achieve the results I want.
Photoshop, Lightroom, and Capture NX 2 have all of those features and more. The question is, which one do I bother with?
If you need to merge images for HDR or Panaramics, then Photoshop is your tool. The others don’t offer that. Ditto for composite images. So if you want to create the type of digital art that involves dropping images on top of each other then you need Photoshop. Also, if you need the ability to add text to your images (such as a copyright message or watermark) then Photoshop is what you need. However, with great power comes great responsibility. (I always wanted to say that.) Photoshop is powerful, which is a nice way to say there is a lot there to learn. And you pay for that power. If you have the money and the means to learn all of its features, then why not get Photoshop. There isn’t anything that will have you saying, “Gee, if only I had Lightroom I could …” Nope, there is really nothing you can’t do with Photshop. The other tools basically took what Photoshop offers, and streamlined those features for Photographers. So unless you need Photoshop, you may be better off saving money and going with another tool. With that out of the way, let’s look at the others.
Lightroom is different from Photoshop in that its user interface is designed with the Photographer’s workflow in mind. You get separate modules for the Image Library, Editing, Printing, Slideshow, and a module that generates web sites. If you know you want to generate websites then Lightroom might be the right tool for you. However, there are some other things to take into account.
Lightroom uses a “catalog” file that stores a reference to each photo. The catalog also stores a thumbnail image and any edit step you perform on each image. My concern is that this one catalog file holds every edit step to thousands upon thousands of images. I hope you have a good backup strategy. Because if that baby goes you will be up very late re-editing all of those images.
However, the advantage is that you can work on the thumbnail image even if the original file has been moved. The reason I like this is because I can store all my files physically on an external USB drive. When that drive is not connected, I can still edit the image in Lightroom. I just can’t export the image or print it, which is fine.
Also, as I said, Lightroom has a good web site generator. You can even find templates online to change the look of the sites. It is fast and it has an awesome library model for managing metadata for the images. But again, that meta data is stored in the lightroom catalog and is not accessible by other software. iPhoto, anyone??? I don’t have a mac so I can’t comment on that. Maybe they did something to give iPhoto access to that stuff. I doubt it though, as iPhoto would also have to read the all the edit steps for ever image and render the final image to display it. That would require an unprecedented amount of cooperation between Adobe and Apple.
My preferred editor is Capture NX 2. It cost less than half the price of Lightroom, which means you can spend that other two hundred bucks on a Nikonians Acedemy workshop to learn how to use it. It stores the edit steps as XML data inside the raw image without changing the actual raw data. This “decentralized” model means that one corrupt file won’t blow away thousands of image edits, which is what you risk with Lightroom. I also like the versioning scheme. The sharpening tools are very good and its raw converter was written by the guys who invented their raw format. If you shoot Nikon raw, you can’t go wrong with Capture NX 2.
What I like most about Capture NX 2 is that it knows enough about the Nikon raw format that it uses camera settings that are ignored by Lightroom and Photoshop. For instance, let’s say you have your Picture Control on your D300 set to Vivid because you are doing landscape and you know you want that color and sharpness to pop. Capture NX 2 has a Picture Control area that loads those settings and applies them during the conversion to an RGB image. Lightroom, however, ignores them and only uses white balance. This means that your workflow actually begins behind the camera, not after importing an image into the editor. Saving you thirty seconds on one image is nice. If you have two thousand images to touchup, you just saved about 17 hours.
Capture NX 2 has some really great tools to make your workflow efficient, such as the HCL editor, and the Control Points, which use U Point technology. A simple way to explain control points is that they use color and “texture” to select objects out of the photo. If the picture is of a boat and you want to select that boat, you just drop a control point on it and Capture NX 2 selects the boat. Awesome!
You will find Capture NX 2 to be slower about certain things than Lightroom. For instance, if you want to apply metadata settings to multiple images, there is more work required in Capture NX 2 since it doesn’t use a centralized catalog. It is faster to create database records in a catalog then to add the meta data to a raw file and re-save it.
Currently, I use Capture NX 2 almost exclusively. While I like the library module of Lightroom better than the browser window for Capture NX 2, my main concern is editing. And there are other browsers out there if I need a better one. View NX, Bridge, and Photo Mechanic are all examples. I don’t have Photo Mechanic but will probably purchase it in the near future. It also generates slide shows and websites. I still use Photoshop if I need to apply a copyright watermark. I’m hoping Nik Software will add a feature to the next version where I can apply copyright watermarks right from Capture NX 2 or View NX. We will keep our fingers crossed.