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Capture NX Editing - (CNX)

Our 2^nd most popular course. In a day we can take a person with no or little previous experience of editing and show them how to perform a wide range of editing tasks, allow them to get some hands on experience at editing and edit a number of photographs making their own decisions on what changes to make.

While normally we are not keen on course handouts, we have gone to the opposite extreme with this course and produced a colour illustrated reference book that those attending take away, plus a laminated card that tells them all the keyboard shortcuts available.

Capture NX is the ideal program for editing photographs taken on a Nikon DSLR, and although it can handle both JPG’s and RAW, you get the full benefits only when you are using Raw. One of the major surprises for many is both the ease of use and the speed that you can edit photos. I don’t think there is any other program that you could teach people to edit fully in a day knowing they were going to be able to confidently and competently be able to go away and edit their own work.

There are several reasons for this. A feature called colour control points, allows the program to recognise things that you point at, and you can then make changes to that item, such as lightening or darkening, as well as a range of other things. You don’t have to draw lines around it, create layers, masks or anything, its just point and pull a slider. Secondly any tool can be switched to any other, so for example you can paint an area orange then switch this to focusing that area selectively, lightening it or any other action. There are also a limited number of tools and filters and although you have a range of ways to alter these changes further its easy to see, find and understand. Generally we can make the same editing changes in Capture NX in under 5 minutes that would take up 2 or more hours in Photoshop.  It does not do all that Photoshop does by a long way, particularly the artistic stuff, writing text and combining photos and images.

You can download a 30 day trial version of Capture NX off the Nikon website, some like to do it before while others like to come on the course then go back and try out the 30 day trial with the knowledge to operate it before making a purchasing decision. If you have a D300 or D3, you will have a free copy of Capture NX. In some cases and for some periods Capture NX was also given with the D200.  If you end up with an extra copy, when you already have one, then let us know and we will match you with a client looking for one and we suggest £50 is the ideal price for it. If you have to buy a copy, then just over £100 is the UK price, but you can get lower cost editions elsewhere.

We have here Photoshop CS and CS3 as well as Capture NX, and use all regularly in some way or another, for example all our magazine adverts are done on Photoshop CS3 now. All of the current limited edition art photographs we publish under the Camera Images Brand, were edited on Capture NX, we do use Photoshop CS3 as well but just to add titles.

Its also Capture NX that we use most of the time when people come in to use the Edit and Print Service we run. With this people who don’t want to edit, and often have had a major holiday or some other experience that they have photographed come in and sit with one of us while we edit the photos, with them making the decisions and us making it happen and printing the results out for them. Although we can do parts on Photoshop and in some cases will do a little in Photoshop, in most cases we do the vast majority of the editing in Capture NX and then switch to Photoshop only to do the items we can't do in Capture NX.

On the training day we start by running a quick demonstration to show you the capabilities, then run through this more slowly showing every option and explaining every option and menu. We edit a number of photographs to show you the sequence and how we go about deciding both what to do and the order to do it in. By some when soon after lunch this is complete and you get to operate the keyboard and mouse, initially just going over a few parts to get the feel of it and then editing a range of photographs, firstly with us telling you what to do, then with you deciding what you would like to do and us assisting you to make it happen and then finally with you doing it all and just asking us questions as they come up.

The practical makes use of a wide variety of photographs, with varying subject matter, so whatever your interest there will be photographs that you will enjoy editing.

This works for everyone and we have never had anyone unable to master this in the day. After you go home, often you will have odd questions that arise and you email in or call us and we assist you to resolve these points.

A standard 7 hour day is ideal for the Capture NX course as it gives you the time to learn how to use it and get practice, you can cut it shorter and save a little, at the expense of about half of the practical hands on, or alternatively extend the day, and bring along a load of your own photographs to edit here with our help.

Quite a few people combine a day doing Capture NX with one or more other days, perhaps looking at flash and creative lighting, or portraiture, or some other specialist area. Remember by using training vouchers you can make a commitment to training, and make large savings, or getting lens cheaper or taking advantage of other promotions, selecting later which other courses you wish to take.

Some also like to bring their own PC and printer to us and get both the screen calibrated and produce printer profiles while here, so that when they go home they can produce exhibition quality work. If you are doing this check with us before and we will tell you exactly what you will need to have with you. There is no additional cost for doing this with you. We also, for clients only, have a service where we can produce printer profiles via a post in service, you will find details of this on the main Camera Images website under Customer Services, which is off the Services Menu section.