NX 2 discussion & (hopefully) tips

Originally Posted by Canis Vulpes

I see, it not THE dock but a dock!

If the tool tile is left in its default position instead of the default position for NX(1) there is no issue, see screen grab.

Not sure where your dock is off of, but mine is to the right, so if I had got to the situation you show via the P with tool box restored, the dock unhidesbehind the bank of palletes, so is totally inaccessible. Also I have the tool box where I do as I never use anything to left of horizontal nor the mini box you have top left (that is dragged off screen). Also for portraits, where you have it, it takes 10% off the potential picture size, may not matter on a massive screen, but does on my 1440x900.

[Canis Vulpes]

Chris,

I was going to look again at the screen layout but the link is no longer valid, could you please check.

Originally Posted by Canis Vulpes

Chris,

I was going to look again at the screen layout but the link is no longer valid, could you please check.

Think I have put it back. The other things about leaving tools on the right are (1) that is where tool settings reappear, always docked however often one undocks and saves workspace, so even more screen space gets wasted (2) having the tool box below menu allows a fast lunge to top left for all tools that do not have a keyboard short-cut. I assume use of a smart mouse that flies like a hawk moved rapidly but with tortoise sureness moved slowly.(Kensington pocket mouse pro in my case)

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by Don Hoey

......When I get a mo I will post a screen grab of the Windows view of F

Don

Chris,

Windows view in F ( full screen ) is exactly the same as in Foxy's post. So no need to post another.

Don

having rapidly got into habit of panning using the scroll wheel, I discovered that +option it also zooms (but in steps); nevertheless very fast so bye bye/birds eye, or at least minimise for more room for main pallette except when exact zoom needed.

Also when cropping, option key toggles thirds lines. I wonder how many more shortcuts there are than list in appendix?

BTW the browser version of the manual accessed from help menu is ever so much easier to get about and read than pdf version, though the content is the same

With the arrival of grandson who is a photogenic natural, complaints were made about there being no equivalent pics of son. Not true; found a few negatives from early 70s to scan, then while at it some earlier colour slides jumped out and this is where we get to NX2.

Scanning at 1600+ gives NX2 something to byte at with quite good possibilities of correcting and enhancing. For B&W I still find Color-it (son of MacPaint) easier and adequate. Trying to restore old pics in PSE was what originally put me off photoshop derivatives, something always on wrong layer etc. No problem with NX2 type selections (nor Color-it, where you can also cut and paste rather than stamp for seriously damaged pics).

Only caution is that when saving imported image as .tif, some programmes now seem to have different ideas on LZW compression and NX2 is fussy, so try 1 before doing huge batches and maybe don't compress. As always, whatever the origin of a file, once in NX, it can be saved as .nef with all adjustments still live for fine tuning later if necessary. So .tif can be binned anyway.

http://www.fileformat.info/mirror/egff/ch09_04.htm and adjacent pages give a lot of data about LZW, RLE, CCIT etc. for anyone preferring science to poke-it-and-see.

Rather than using the obvious Filter>Black and white conversion, I have been using Filter>photo effects, then 'tinted' in the drop down menu. This leaves you free to choose the tint exactly rather than a preset, but less obviously using the colour range sliders enables an optimisation of contrasts better than the spectrum type filter.

Lastly add a tip passed on by Duncan: alter the colour temperature in tandem. Although it is basically like altering the yellow-blue colour scale, it works at the RAW stage and sort of isn't quite the same.

Intuitive dabbling needed. method used in
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...606&ppuser=780 &
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...607&ppuser=780 & more in pbase gallery 'silver_sea'

those of us not having huge lenses, tripods, infinite patience etc come home with bird pics nice enough to want to keep and share, though never going to become definitives.

I have come round to this as a way of using NX2 to best purpose, maximising use of RAW/nef working, but balancing it with selection strength. The example was taken at 5.30pm and in excitement of watching the birdie had failed to notice the light had become artistic rather than strong and the auto was down to 1/200 or less at f5.6.

Frame 1 shows the sharpening linked to contrast adjustment (LCH) on a mask created using a 'selection control point' reinforced at the pointy bits of bird with an ordinary soft selection brush. By itself or using the tempting 'quick fix' level adjuster, this has previously led to a lot of grainy noise.

Frame 2 shows this reduced by the 'camera settings'>colour noise reduction and correcting the exposure using 'quick fix'>exposure compensation - both RAW adjustments. You can overcome the confusion between what are and are not RAW adjustments in the interface by trying out a .tif file and all RAW/nef is greyed out. The colour noise reduction is a bit like 'Neat Image' balancing sharpening where needed against noise reduction where not; in nef the software knows the camera without being taught.

Obviously perfectionists would bin this, but then where do you see a perfect image of a young kestrel in nice light and not a near-stationary hover pose?

Final and one or two others at/near
http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/imag...37831/original