Nikon Capture Update Available

[Marshal]

As for the CA correction in 4.3, can it correct it without altering the color in other parts of the image? Particularly around the edges of objects?

In other programs & actions I've tried, it would often mess up the color in other areas that were fine that had no CA. I don't want to correct one problem while causing another.

[jdemott]

Nikon users may want to download the update to Nikon Capture software now available on the Nikon USA website, or on other Nikon regional websites (it may be necessary to download from the same region as your original software to get the proper update).  There is also an update to Nikon View available for download.

The new version 4.3 adds an automatic correction feature for chromatic aberration and a red eye correction tool, as well as correcting other unspecified problems according to Nikon.  The big question for Nikon users is whether it will improve the speed of the program.  I've just used it briefly and it seems slightly faster than version 4.2.1 on my computer, but not dramatically so.  (That is a subjective opinion as I didn't time any file conversions before performing the update.) The CA feature seems to work as advertised and I haven't tried the red eye correction.

In trying out the new version of NC, I again compared it to opening the same RAW files in ACR.  To make things as comparable as possible, I selected files that were shot in direct sunlight and then set the white balance manually in both programs to the same Kelvin reading (5200).  I then opened the files in Photoshop for further editing (using the Open in Photoshop feature in NC and the Open button in ACR).  NC took a couple seconds longer to open files initially and maybe 3 or 4 seconds longer to transfer to Photoshop than did ACR, but the results are vastly better than ACR.  Color, tonal transitions, contrast, texture are all excellent in the NC converted files--the appearance is that of a finely developed, film based image.  By comparison, the ACR processed file looks two dimensional, with color and contrast that are just a little bit off.  It may be possible to improve the ACR results by fine tuning the settings for each file, but that would lose all the speed advantage for ACR (and a good deal more).  On balance, I intend to continue using NC for raw conversions and hope that Nikon continues to improve its performance in future updates (something I'm sure they are very much aware of).

[jdemott]

The CA correction feature in NC 4.3 is automatic--you either turn it on or off.  There is no documentation of what sort of correction algorithm is being employed.  There is some speculation that the feature employs a look-up table based in part on the known CA tendencies of particular Nikon lenses, but I have no way of knowing.

In the past I have used the CA correction in the Debarrelizer plug-in and the CA feature in ACR, both of which displace color channel information based on the radial distance from the center of the photo.  With either of those programs, you manually select the amount of correction desired.  Of course, it is possible to overcorrect, which can result in unwanted color fringing somewhere in the image

To date, I have closely examined only a few dozen images that I corrected for CA with the new version 4.3 and in all cases I thought the results were excellent--equal to or better than the results I was able to achieve with the other methods I had tried, and with less hassle.  I saw no evidence of unwanted artifacts in other areas of the images.