Guide And Tips For Working With Nikon Capture NX-D

Updated 29 April 2018 regarding recommendation for colour moire reduction.

Updated 2 August 2017 for recommendation about colour noise reduction. Clarified recommendations for colour profiles. Revised grammar.

Updated 22 June 2017 for information about astro noise reduction.

Updated 2 December 2016 for revised recommendations.

Updated 25 November 2016 to include reader observations and suggestions. Also included amended recommendations for noise reduction.

Updated on 5 October 2016 to include more details about the Picture Controls and adjust some grammar.

Capture NX-D is a great RAW converter for Nikon NEFs, no matter how you feel about its in-sufficiency for everything else. For those initial steps of detail extraction, colour interpretation, global exposure adjustment, and noise reduction – it is a great tool. I have spent nearly two years experimenting with the various RAW conversion tools – ACR, Capture One Pro, Photo Ninja, DXO OP, etc. Against all these paid options, NX-D performs surprisingly well. It is especially good at colour reproduction, where none of the competition could quite get the kind of accurate true-to-life colours as NX-D could. Of course, I should emphasize that realistic colours does not automatically mean it looks good to everyone! It really boils down to a matter of preference. Personally I find it easier to perform my edits on a well-exposed image with a neutral colour palette. I use NX-D to produce a globally exposure-adjusted, colour-corrected, noise-corrected, high quality 16-bit TIFF to feed into other post-processing applications that are better for detailed adjustments, such as Lightroom. Use the right tool for the job.

However as I have mentioned earlier, NX-D is not user-friendly and insufficient in many aspects. So here are some tips that could help get that RAW conversion part done.

1. Check colour space setting

NX-D will default to exporting in the colour space your image is set to in-camera. I have no idea if it will also work within that colour space, but decided not to take the risk. If you want the exported TIFF to be in ProPhotoRGB, remember to set this in NX-D’s preferences. Image thumbnails may end up being displayed with wrong colours, but the image you are editing is displayed correctly, and it will export to ProPhotoRGB.

2. Change values in discrete increments

See those sliders in NX-D? NEVER DRAG THEM TO SEE HOW THEY AFFECT THE IMAGE. THIS WILL RESULT IN SUPER-SLOW PERFORMANCE. Change values in discrete increments or typing in the new values with a keyboard. Following this simple rule improves your experience by 1,000%.

3. NX-D is NOT “not sharp”

NX-D generates a lower resolution fit-to-window preview image, so some users mistake it as being “less sharp”. Magnify to 100% and you will see that it renders as much detail as other RAW converters. This is not unique to NX-D. Past versions of On1 Photo Suite over-sharpens the fit-to-window image, while Alien Skin Exposure renders an even lower-resolution preview image.

4. Enable Axial Colour Aberration Correction

Enable this and leave it at 50%. You can pull it up to 100%, where it works shockingly well in a side-by-side comparison with DXO Optics Pro. However I have seen some examples where pushing this over 50% starts graying-out legitimate magentas and reds in an image. So I’ll leave it at 50% unless you are confident it will not cause degradation. I’ll happily push this to 100% in images where I know has negligible risk – identifying them takes a little bit of experience though.

5. Use the Picture Control Styles

Fact: Canon and Nikon’s JPEG engines are good enough that some photographers only use them. They need to be good because event, sports and wedding photographers do not have the time to process every RAW file they shoot. Indeed, I find Nikon’s Picture Control styles very useful for quickly getting a look close to what you are after. In addition, the results are relatively neutral, so you hardly get the uncomfortable feel that the software is imposing some corny or over-abused aesthetic on your work. You can also tweak the result to suit your own tastes with the Picture Control sliders. Here are a few styles that I like to use:

– Flat. Really flat, but helps to lift the shadows substantially. This is useful for when you want the most neutral and evenly-exposed TIFF possible to start with. I use this most of the time.

– Neutral. More contrast and slightly more colour punch than Flat. This is useful when you feel that Standard has too much contrast but do not want to go to Flat.

Note that other than “flat” and “neutral”, the other profiles may be too strong for additional post-processing by another tool. But of course the final preference and decision lies with the user.

– Standard. The results may seem to have a little too much contrast in some cases. However, manually reducing the contrast level could produce something that is close to what you are after.

– Vivid. Does not work well every time, but can yield some surprisingly pleasant results when you want something more punchy.

6. Set “Sharpen” In Picture Control

Do this in the Picture Controls panel. We recommend to only perform sharpening in the last step of post-processing as saturation and contrast adjustments can yield results that react differently to different levels of sharpness adjustment. Nowadays I set this to 1, but you can experiment and determine your own preferred levels.

7. White Balance and Exposure controls are great

The white balance tool is easy to understand. If you ever have to adjust white balance, you will appreciate how good colour accuracy is in NX-D compared to other RAW converters, especially in mixed lighting. Make the image warmer or cooler, and watch how the colours retain authenticity and not go weird.

Use the Exposure Compensation tools for global exposure adjustments. The exposure slider is simple to understand. Active D-Lighting is surprisingly competent for intelligently pushing up shadows and pulling down over-bright highlights. In fact, it is so good that it should count as one of the key features of NX-D. You can get very satisfying exposure compensation results with a click of a button, and get shocked when you say to yourself, “hey that’s exactly what I wanted to do!”

You can also tweak shadows and highlights with the details tone tool if the exposure slider and ADL controls are not sufficient to provide a satisfactory exposure histogram. Be warned that the highlight recovery tool may introduce distracting shades in your image. D-Lighting HS may clip blacks and highlights, so I avoid using that. If even these tools are insufficient, we have the next tool….

8. Use the LCH Exposure Curve tool

This adjusts brightness without affecting the colours. (Do not confuse this with the “Levels & Curves” tool – that will affect your colours!) Use this for more control beyond the simpler exposure/ADL/shadow/highlight sliders. Remember there is no need to be exact. Our aim is to just get different parts of the exposure curve adjusted well enough for us to finish it off easily in another post-processing application.

9. Consider “Colour Moire Reduction”

This is unchecked by default and for good reason. Selecting “Colour Moire Reduction” may remove colour moire but could actually cause details to disappear. However it is extremely effective in removing tiny colour moire noise.

Here is my recommendation. You should only consider this control option If you see faint tiny specks of colour grain at 100% magnification and they bother you. Try setting “Colour Moire Reduction” to “Low” and observe the result at 100% magnification. Toggle between “Off” and “Low” options and see if the colour grain removal is effective and if some of the important details in the image disappear. Sometimes I activate this as important details in an image are not affected. Sometimes I do not as image details I consider to be important suffers degradation.

10. Noise reduction

Make sure to use the latest noise reduction algorithm available. Just leave the detail sliders at 50. I spent a lot of time experimenting with this, and the default value of 50 gives the optimal balance of detail retention and noise reduction.

In the past, I felt that NX-D’s colour noise reduction is less impressive than Adobe’s and usually do not set it higher than 50. I always ended up using Adobe’s colour noise reduction tool afterwards to clean up any residual colour noise that was too challenging for NX-D. However in a recent NX-D update, the colour noise reduction tool may have been tweaked. In a few examples I was able to push it up to 90 without any visible detrimental effect to the image. Feel free to experiment with this on your own.

NX-D’s luminance noise reduction behaves in a somewhat opposite manner to how Adobe’s noise reduction works.

With Adobe’s noise reduction tool, low intensity values work on smaller noise grain with little impact on details. Increasing the luminance noise reduction strength removes larger noise grain but you end up getting that over-smoothened plastic look as the reduction strength increases.

NX-D’s noise reduction affects large noise grain first at low intensity values, and it retains details very well while doing so. You have to increase the luminance noise reduction strength to remove the smaller noise grain, and that is when you get that over-smoothened plastic look.

Yes, we can combine both solutions! First, use NX-D’s noise reduction to remove large noise grain. After exporting to TIFF for detailed editing with Lightroom/Photoshop, use Adobe’s noise reduction tool to clean up the remaining noise grain. This technique removes noise and retains details surprisingly well.

NX-D’s noise reduction works slowly, so choose luminance strength levels in increments of 10, then sit back and relax while NX-D applies the changes. DO NOT TRY TO PERFORM ANY OTHER ADJUSTMENT WHILE NOISE REDUCTION IS RUNNING, AS NX-D IS CRASH-PRONE AT THIS STAGE AND YOU MAY LOSE ALL YOUR CHANGES. I don’t push the value higher than 40, as I am uncomfortable with the increasing loss of image details beyond that.

11. Noise Reduction – Additional Topics

By default, NX-D will not clean up hot pixels. Just check the “Astro Noise Reduction” option and those dreaded pixels will disappear magically. I suspect this was left unchecked by default because it might cause problems with astro-photography.

I am still experimenting with the effect of “Edge Noise Reduction”, and will update this guide when I have a conclusive opinion about it.

12. The Final Workflow summary

So here is my workflow summary in NX-D summarised:

• Select desired picture style in Picture Controls panel. Enable Axial Colour Aberration Correction. Enable “Astro Noise Reduction” Set Sharpen to a low value such as 0 or 1.
• Tweak white balance if necessary.
• Global exposure adjustment using ADL, exposure sliders, highlight/shadow recovery sliders.
• If necessary, a little exposure tweak using the LCH exposure curve.
• Tweak Picture Control settings if required. I don’t do this all the time, as I may prefer to perform more precise tuning in another image processing application.
• Examine image at 100% and perform colour moire reduction and noise reduction if needed.
• Export to 16-bit TIFF and carry on editing in a preferred image editor. In my case Lightroom. I now have a well-corrected high-quality TIFF to work with.

The whole process could take less than 5 minutes, or 10 minutes if you are experimenting with different noise reduction values on a noisy image. Remember that you can just perform preliminary noise clean-up as described above, and perform a second round of noise-processing in Adobe’s noise reduction tool.

And that’s a wrap! – WY