DISQUS

Interesting. The integration between WP and DISQUS is pretty good. I am curious to see how well ID integrates with self-hosted WP. I can imagine the wordpress.com hosted blogs can benefit from this.

Max

Andres,

You are welcome. Have you tried any yet? Which one do you like the most?

Thanks.

Max

It is a good news. People now starts to question how Canon could charge $8000 for EOS-1Ds Mark III.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?foru...

Perhaps $2000 is too much for the difference between D700 and D3?

Max

Scott,

I will definitely try to share more photos with my visitors and bring more up-to-date news on the digital imaging industry.

Thank you for commenting.

Max

You cannot just buy one yet. You have to be extremely lucky to win one of them.

Max

Bruce,

USM works pretty well if used properly. High-pass sharpening is another popular method but it doesn't offer the range of sharpening you can get from USM. You can find the high-pass sharpening tutorial in the most popular list of this page.

Typically I leave sharpening on in camera so it is easier to judge the focus accuracy. You can always turn it off in Capture NX base adjustment and apply your own sharpening at the end. For casual prints or web postings there is hardly any visible difference.

I am sure 20x30 will be reasonably sharp but perhaps not at close examination distance. I found 12x18 is excellent and that's the largest size I have tried.

Max

Johnny,

People at the sporting events with white lenses are probably not using the 40D but the professional models such as 1D Mark II N, or Mark III, etc. Nikon recently released the D3 and many high caliber lenses with AFS-VR. Even through they are still black, I am sure they can compete with Canon's.

Max

Doug,

Thanks for your comment. Capture NX can simply get the result without tedious tweaking.

The base of the mountain is not a horizon. The horizon line can be seen slightly below center line on the right.

Thanks.

Max

Bernard,

It depends on the photo. They work differently and one of them may be more effective for a given photo. I'd suggest you try both and evaluate the results to see which works out better.

Max

Bernard,

Did you change the blending mode to overlay? You may also need to zoom in a little bit.

Max

John,

Thanks for your comment. This tutorial explains the use of the selection brush and linked adjustments, which are two very useful tools available in Capture NX.

Max

Tom,

Absolutely. Capture NX is very easy to use once you have a good understanding of its concepts and it consistently brings out great results with minimal efforts.

Max

Q, Please see my response #2 above. The settings file will not work if the image has different dimension or orientation. This is due to the limitation of Capture NX. That's why it is not shared. Thanks.

Max

John,

The blending mode determines how the resulting adjustment is superimposed on the image before the adjustment. In this case, I used the overlay mode and applied the overlay blending only to the luminance channel to avoid affecting colors and creating color halos around the edges.

Max

Jeff,

There are some differences between them. The color control point is nice because it allows you to select the exact color. The downside of it is that user does not have good control on the areas it will affect. If you turn on "Show selection", you will find that it affects the black and white areas of the eye. Not big deal, just some extra paint job with the selection brush.

The Hue adjustment in LCH does not affect neutral colors so black/gray/white remains black/gray/white.

On the other question: I am not sure what effect you are looking for in batch processing portraits. If you can point me to an example PS processing, I will see if I can come up with something similar in Capture NX.

Thanks.

Max

Chris,

Thanks for the comment. This is a stock photo that may or may not be a photo from Nikon camera or lens.

Max

Randy,

Thanks for your comment and the great tip. More tutorials (and likely a book) will be coming. ;-)

Max

Andriy,

Typically when you click on the plus, the previously applied adjustment is totally gone. Unless you accidentally clicked on the minus first, you will need to use the fill/remove tool to remove them completely because clicking on the plus selection brush will not clear out the effect for you in this case.

Max

Chris,

I am working on it. In summary, use colorize and Gaussian blur to reduce dark circles and use LCH to change colors. In both cases, use the selection brush to selectively apply the effect. It works best with a pen tablet such as Wacom Intous 3.

Max

Chintan,

Color management is a very complex topic. I'd recommend the following websites for a better resources of information.

http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html

http://www.outbackphoto.com/color_management/

And for Nikon Capture NX specific, read this one:

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/nikon-...

Max

Jeff,

Thanks for the information.

The offer from Nikon is just for a software key to unlock the software after the evaluation period since the software itself can be downloaded. The amazon offer is actually a boxed product.

Max

Richard,

Thank you for your comment. I use Capture NX on Windows computers. The program stores the settings file in a folder like this on Vista:

C:\Users\Max\Documents\Capture NX\Settings Files

If you store the settings file in the default locations, you don't have to browse to find them. Other than that, it should be ok to store it anywhere you'd like.

Max

Ed,

Thanks for reminding me! Hopefully I will have time during the holidays to work on it.

Max

I have the Nikkor 18-70mm from the D70 package a while ago. It is a very good value. I was curious why Nikon was no able to squeeze out a f/2.8 DX lens since both Tamron and Sigma also have the same 67mm filter thread size. However I found f/2.8 to be very valuable especially for low light situations.

Pete,

I saw that one too. It is a common practice in the entertainment industry to PS the photos. It is hilarious in that case but it could be a lossy job rather than intentional fake.

Max