Author Topic: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs  (Read 2915 times)

Matthew Currie

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A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« on: June 18, 2017, 15:32:07 »
This is not likely a situation many will encounter, but I thought it interesting enough to note.

I've been going through a large mass of photographs from a recent trip, with the aim of making a CD for friends.  I don't usually do a great deal of editing for this, and use Faststone Image Viewer or Irfanview for the conversion.  When some exposure compensation, white balance, etc. is needed, I take the Raw file to one of the basic Nikon editors.  In the past, I've used View NX-2.  Faststone allows editing in an external editor, and return to Faststone, whereupon one can save the JPG from there.  I like this option, as Faststone's cropping, among other things, is very efficient.  However, since my wife got a D7200 whose files are no longer editable in View NX-2, I've had to do this in Capture NX-D instead, and although that program works fine, the edited result is not read by the Windows NEF codec.  I can edit a file in Capture NX-D, but when I return to Faststone, the version loaded is the unedited one.  Apparently the editing to the "sidecar" file, while quicker by far, is also not picked up by other Windows programs.   

As I say, this is not likely a problem for most, but I thought it an interesting change in the way Raw files are processed by the Nikon programs, and read by Windows.

Akira

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2017, 22:41:15 »
Nikon just released a new NEF codec version 1.31.0 for Windows a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure if that would help you solve the problem, though...
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Matthew Currie

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2017, 02:20:30 »
Nope, sorry to say it doesn't.  I just put it into my win 10 laptop anyway to try it out, and edits made in Capture NX-D do not show at all in other Windows apps, including View NX-2.  It can be worked around, of course, by saving the edit as a JPG or Tiff, but it surprised me a little that NXD edits are so invisible to other programs.

David H. Hartman

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2017, 04:27:44 »
I think it's the stupid sidecars that CNX-D uses. Windows doesn't read those so it only displays a thumbnail base on the JPG preview saved at the time the photo was taken. CNX2 and VNX2 wrote a new JPG preview when an NEF was updated and so Windows used the new JPG from CNX2 or VNX2 but only has the original if CNX-D is used.

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Matthew Currie

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2017, 08:13:49 »
I think it's the stupid sidecars that CNX-D uses. Windows doesn't read those so it only displays a thumbnail base on the JPG preview saved at the time the photo was taken. CNX2 and VNX2 wrote a new JPG preview when an NEF was updated and so Windows used the new JPG from CNX2 or VNX2 but only has the original if CNX-D is used.

Dave
Yes, this is the issue, and for most purposes it does not make much difference, since one usually is going to save a JPG or a Tiff once the editing is done anyway,  but it's a mild annoyance that the modified Raw file is invisible to other programs. 

MFloyd

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2017, 09:15:09 »
I guess, you are all the first to claim, that an original NEF files should remain "untouched"; well, with Nikon it wasn't the case before,; now it is with the XMP sidecar file.

And I don't want to lit another "windows" fire; but there seems always to be something wrong; another driver to be uploaded etc.
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Matthew Currie

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Re: A small but odd difference between Nikon programs
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2017, 15:57:00 »
I guess, you are all the first to claim, that an original NEF files should remain "untouched"; well, with Nikon it wasn't the case before,; now it is with the XMP sidecar file.

And I don't want to lit another "windows" fire; but there seems always to be something wrong; another driver to be uploaded etc.

I can see a good point to both ways of doing it, but I was kind of used to the old system which made it possible for all NEF-capable viewers to pick up the changes without converting the file.   It's not a huge deal,  but not having thought hard about it, it took me by surprise.