April, 2008

As I briefly touched upon in my Nikon D300 compared to Nikon D80 I saw huge differences in processing Nikon D300 NEFs in Capture NX vs Adobe Lightroom.

Here is the same ISO 800 image edited in NX and LR adjusted only for contrast. Click on the images for bigger sized photos.

1. Default noise reduction

Edited in Adobe LightRoom without additional noise reduction

Edited in Capture NX without additional noise reduction

Adobe LightRoom 100% crop

Nikon Capture NX 100% crop

IMO, Capture NX is way better out of the box.

2. Increasing Noise Reduction in Adobe Lightroom

Adobe LightRoom edited photo after adjusting Luminance NR and sharpening

LightRoom 100% crop after tweaking Noise Reduction in LightRoom

3. Images edited with no sharpening and no noise reduction

Adobe Lightroom, no sharpening, no noise reduction

Capture NX, no sharpening, no noise reduction

Adobe Lightroom, no noise reduction, no sharpening, 100% crop

Capture NX, no sharpening, no noise reduction, 100% crop

4. Photos edited with just Sharpening turned off

Adobe lightroom, no sharpening, extra noise reduction

Capture NX, no sharpening, default noise reduction

Adobe Lightroom no sharpening, extra NR, 100% crop

Capture NX, no sharpening, default NR, 100% crop

IMO, Capture NX delivers much better image quality in every possible setting.

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