I love the workflow in Aperture. I hate the user interface in Capture NX. That said, I decided to see if the RAW conversion in Aperture lives up to my expectations. Frankly, I think I am getting great images out of Aperture, but I am letting others that I read cast some doubts on the quality of the RAW conversion. Also, I really do like the fact that Capture NX can read the camera settings in the file and that makes it my application of choice when I need to generate a quick CD of JPEGs for someone who says, “hey, can I have a copy of those photos you took tonight?” It is easier to just generate JPEGs than explain that I have to process the files first.For this test I have decided to work on a single image in each application. It is not a perfect image, that wouldn’t be fair, but it is an image that only needs basic RAW conversion adjustments such as lighting, saturation, sharpening, etc. I will try to do each processing step in both applications, or to note when a step was not needed or not possible in one application. I will work all the way through on the image in one application before moving on to the other, so I am not trying to make the image look better in one application than in another. My goal for both processes will be to get the best image I can, one that looks as I conceived it through the view finder. I will generate JPEGs after completing each step in editing, but a step might require more than one adjustment to acheive the stated goal.

Tools

The image for this comparison was taken with the following equipment and configuration:

• Nikon D200 with AF-S 105mm f/2.8 G ED VR
• Compressed RAW capture
• Handheld in daylight with VR enabled
• Manual focus
• Exposure: 1/30th of a second @ f/22, ISO 100

Post-processing:

• Macintosh dual G5 with 4 GB of RAM
• 30″ Apple Cinema Display calibrated with Adobe RGB
• Apple Aperture 1.5.3
• Nikon Capture NX 1.1
• Adobe Photoshop CS (for sRGB conversion of Capture JPEGs)
• Epson R2400 for print comparison

As you can see from above, I could not figure out how to work in Adobe RGB in capture, but save the JPEGs as sRGB. I didn’t want to calibrate my workspace to sRGB and Aperture converts to sRGB by default on export anyway. It also turned out that these full-quality exports were too large to upload to Flickr. I didn’t want to step down the JPEG quality, so I resized all images to 50% in Photoshop to make sure that the same resizing alorithm was used for everything.

Aperture

The Untouched Image

For this first image, I turned off all the Camera Default settings in Aperture. I slid the boost down to 0, unchecked the Sharpening, Chroma Blur, and Auto Noise Compensation. Surprisingly, the shadow detail got much better when I pulled down the boost.Here is the image with all the RAW settings disabled:

Here is the image with its D200 Camera Defaults applied in Aperture. As I noted above, the shadows look worst here. I might have to start using boost adjustments.

Step 1: Exposure and Lighting

There is a little room on the right of the histogram for this image (sorry, I am too lazy to make screen captures of the tools for each set), so it can use a 1/3 stop exposure adjustment to brighten it up. As I noted, it is also lacking details in the shadows and the mid-tones are a little too dark (bunched up on the left of the histogram).Steps

• Boost exposure by .33
• Boost shadow slider to 14 in Highlights and Shadows tool
• Boost Mid-tone Contrast by 5 in the Highlights and Shadows tool to correct loss from shadow adjustment
• Boost Color Correction by 5 in the Highlights and Shadows tool to bring a little color into the shadows
• Pulled the Gray slider on the Levels (Luminance) to .40 to boost the mid-tones

Here is what it looks like at this stage:

Step 2: Color

I have some red-green color blindness, so I am conservative with my color adjustments. I avoid anything that can really throw the whole tint of the image off, such as hue adjustments. I do usually adjust saturation though, especially if I adjusted the lighting. This image looks pretty good to me for color, but I remember the red to be more vibrant.Steps:

• Adjust the saturation in the Exposure tool by .1. I tried .2, but it lost detail in the red and made it look smudged.
• Adjust the individual saturations for Red, Yellow, and Green by 2 in the Color tool. To be clear, I clicked on each of these colors at the top of the tool and boosted saturation by 2. There is the slightest bit of color smudge at the lines of the red now, and if it doesn’t correct with sharpening, I will undo this step.

Here is how the photo looks now:

Step 3: Sharpening

There is already some default sharpening applied to this image in the D200 Camera Default section of the RAW conversion. I will apply some more here using the Edge Sharpen tool. This should allow me to sharpen without emphasizing noise. The focus on this image is good (see the petal edges), so all I need to do is reverse the blur that happens in automatic noise reduction and whatever was introduced from color adjustments. I will start by apllying the Intensity at 100% and fiddling with the Edges and Falloff until I get it right. The following looks good.Steps:

• Intensity: .46
• Edges: .56
• Falloff: .61

That’s it. Here is the final image that will be comared to my output from Capture NX. I am going to wait a day or soto do my work in Capture, following my notes for these adjustment, to keep this as objective as possible.

Final Image from Aperture Workflow

Capture NX

Ok, several days have passed and I have processed lots of other photos. I am going to try to stay in Capture NX and avoid looking at any of the versions processed with Aperture, just to make this as objective as possible. After all, I am doing this to see if I should use Capture NX more than I do currently.

The Untouched Image

Since Capture NX reads the in-camera settings and I had sharpening and saturation boosted, I returned everything to none or default and exported this image. It is quite dark, maybe darker than I remember the Aperture image, at least the one with the boost turned off.

Next, I exported the image with the camera settings applied…

Much better, and this is the nice thing about Capture. If the camera settings are good, it saves some work.

Step 1: Exposure and Lighting

In Aperture, I boosted this image by a third of a stop. I expect it to need the same in Capture. Exposure should be exposure, and sure enough, that is what it took to push it up against the right side of the histogram without blowing highlights. The shadows are still too dark and lacking detail though and the midtones still need help.Steps:

• Adjust exposure 1/3 stop in the RAW Adjustments
• Boost shadows in D-Lighting (HQ Mode) to 15
• Pulled the gray slider (mid-tone) to the left on Levels and Curves 1.17

Here is what the image looks like at this stage. It is lacking in saturation in the lower section, but I expected that because of the shadow recovery and boost of the mid-tones. I tried the color correction in D-Lighting, but it gave an orange hue to the yellow.

Notice that the D-Lighting didn’t differentiate between shadows and dark colors in full light. It lightened the color of the pollen on the pistils. I don’t think it should have; they were pretty dark in the original flower (still in bloom, so I checked it).

Step 2: Color

Now its time to fix the saturation in the recovered areas. The saturation in this image is already enhanced from the camera settings, so I am going to use the color booster. I tried the Auto setting and it boosted to 18 and the image looked over saturated. I tried 10 instead. That is all I am going to do here. I tried the Enhance Photo settings, but they change the hue and give a color cast to the whole image.Steps:

• Boost color by 10 in Color Booster

Here is how the photo looks at this stage.

Step 3: Sharpening

This image already has a lot of sharpening applied by the camera settings, so I applied a very light Unsharp Mask to the RGB channel (I don’t think you can apply to luminance-only in Capture).Steps:

• Unsharp Mask: Intensity 10, Radius 5, Threshold 15

Since I don’t use Capture for sharpening on a regular basis, I might be way off the best practice here, but I did what looked best. Here is how the photo looks now that it is complete in Capture NX.

After comparing this image to the one from Aperture, I decided that I lightened the shadows too much, washing out the image, so I reduced the D-Lighting to 5 and the image now looks better, and closer to what I got out of Aperture. Here it is.

Final Comparison

Aperture Final Image

Capture Final Image

Good news. I prefer the image I got out of Aperture. To be sure, I printed them both from a single Photoshop file to my Epson R2400 with a paper profile applied using Enhanced Matte paper and best settings. The image from Aperture has more distinct colors, better contrast, and better detail. I really think that Aperture’s Shadows and Highlights tool is better at recovering detail than Capture’s D-Lighting tool, but that could be because I don’t know how to use Capture as well.

On that point, I should emphasize that I am much more experienced in Aperture than I am in Capture, but that is because I find Aperture easy to use and I find Capture NX to be counter-intuitive in its UI and workflow. I am sure that someone who is better with Capture NX than I am could have gotten better results, but the power of a tool is not just its capabilities in the hands of an expert, but its useability for the average person. Aperture’s tools are just more approachable to me, so I get better results.

End result, I am no longer concerned that I am sacrificing quality in my RAW conversion by using Aperture for my workflow and conversion. I am interested to hear from anyone who thinks that I could have done a better job with Capture NX, but this is what I could get with my skills.

Update

As some readers have pointed out, my limited skills in Capture NX prevented me from getting results as good as those that I got in Aperture. To address this issue, I decided to post the original RAW file, in case anyone would like to download it and try on their own. You should probably right-click on the link and choose to save the file, since it is a standard NEF file. If anyone does get better results than I did, I will be happy to post your file. This exercise was not about faulting Capture, but testing Aperture against it.

Another Update

Thanks to Jim Johnson for taking a stab at this image in Capture NX. He sent me two versions. I think this one comes the closest to what I was looking for in the image. It just goes to show that I need more experience with Capture if I am to use it at all.