When I shoot portraits indoors, I'd like the option to tether my Nikon D90 to a Windows computer with the USB cable, both to view the results and help adjust the lighting, but also to be making an instant backup of each shot.
Does anybody have a favorite solution to this?
If you're looking for a free program to let you shoot tethered with your Nikon, this post discusses a few of the options.
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When I download my raw (Nikon NEF) files from my camera I just connect a USB cord that came with my camera and download the files off of the card. My question is, is it possible to view the files I am downloading. Currently my screen looks like this:
While I do not mind no thumbnail view it would be nice to at least see the file numbers. JPEGs show the thumbnail but no file name. Is it possible to get both?
Few Notes: I am using the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack 3.2, so I can view RAW files in Windows. These files also do not display in Adobe Bridge. I am on Windows XP and using a Nikon D5100. Once I transfer files from camera to local hard drive the raw files view without issue.
I have no idea why you aren't seeing the file names—I use the "classic" views (rather than the task-based native XP version), and I can see the file names regardless of the view mode (tiles, thumbnails, list, details, etc.).
You will need to download and install the Nikon NEF codec to get thumbnails outside of your photo management/editing software. Note that I see thumbnails in Thumbnails view only; I get an Adobe application icon in Tiles view. Also, the thumbnails are never rotated, at least on my system, so shots taken in portrait orientation will be laid over on their sides in Explorer.
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I'm searching for an image viewer with the following features: (situation is, that both jpeg and raw are saved)
At the moment I use Faststone Image viewer, which has all wished features except show only jpeg (if raw exists) and delete both raw and jpeg.
Check out this tool: FastPictureViewer
I'm not sure if there is a free version available but for those who are intrested in buying a viewer that's able to do this... Just take a look :)
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A few days ago I invested in an X-Rite i1 Display 2 colourometer, as per this answer, although I'm having great difficulty getting a Dell U2412M and a Dell E1911 monitor to the same whitepoint. I've tried the software that the device came with and a demo of another piece of software (I can't recall the name unfortunately). I have settled on a piece of free software called Argyll CMS along with the GUI frontend dispcalGUI, as it seems a little more capable; however, this is simply my impression of it.
I'm aware that there will be differences in quality between the U2412M and the E1911, although I'd have thought that after calibrating the monitor and creating a high quality profile for both monitors that the difference would be next to impossible to detect with the eyes. However, there is a very noticable difference in the colours the two monitors show. The U2412M seems to have a slight red tinge to it, while the E1911 has seems more of a grey tinge.
The calibration settings I've used for both monitors is as follows:
Whitepoint: 6500K
White level: 120cd/m2
Black level: Native
Tone curve: 2.2
Calibration quality: High
Profile quality: High
Profile type: Curves + matrix
Testchart file: Large testchart for "curves + matrix" profiles.
I have control of the brightness, contrast and individual RGB channels, so I'm able to calibrate the monitor before using a profile. I've put up links to the profile verification reports for the U2412M and the E1911. You can see that each monitor seems to struggle with particularly blue colours.
Obviously there is no way you can see the actual colours displayed by the monitors, but as I said, it is quite a noticable difference. I know this is a little open-ended, but could anybody suggest what may be going wrong here, or have I just got bad quality monitors?
I used to work for Gretag MacBeth (and later X-Rite when they acquired Gretag.) I've written code for color monitor calibration. Your calibrator is defective and it should not do that. Sadly, the color filters in the unit itself may not ever be able to calibrate your monitor. My i1Display will not calibrate my MacBook monitor... I would contact X-Rite and see if they'll take it back or replace it.
The X-Rite ColorMunki was in development when I left there. It may be a better choice but if I recall it is pretty expensive.
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I'm looking for a free RAW editor/converter on Windows. Can you tell me some strong/weak points of them comparing with Capture NX and/or Adobe Photoshop Elements?
EXIF editing would be a nice bonus.
Related:
As I mentioned in my comment above, the camera manufacturer can sometimes offer an excellent RAW->JPG convertor. One reason to use the manufacturer's software is that no one else knows better how to interpret the RAW information. All the light and lens-specific data especially can be quite tricky to fully interpret and post-process.
In the Nikon world, there's ViewNX, which ships for free with the DSLRs and is also downloadable for free here. It's excellent for first-pass editing of photos, including Exposure, White Balance, Sharpness, Contrast, Brightness, Highlight and Shadow Protection (very impressive), Color Booster, D-Lighting HS, and Axial Color Aberration. You can also do all your Metadata edits here.
Of course, it's not as full-featured as their expensive, and terribly slow pay version: CaptureNX. And also not surprisingly, Nikon inhibits you from one very basic editing option in ViewNX, which is photo cropping (with the hopes that you'll buy CaptureNX just to be able to crop?). So sometimes I'll do my first pass of major edits in ViewNX, convert to RAW in ViewNX, and then crop the JPG in Picasa. Cumbersome, but free and still very high quality.
I'm sure Canon probably offers something similar.
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My early (Canon G2) photos are all JPG, but when I got my Nikon D90 I initially shot in JPG, then switched to RAW+JPG, and now I would like to switch to RAW only.
I have literally thousands of photos on my HDD. The photos are in sub-directories (by date) under a single directory called Import.
I am about to import all these photos into Lightroom 3.0, however, I would like to delete all the JPG files, but only where there is already a corresponding RAW file (ie. I no longer want to keep JPG and RAW versions of the same file).
If I can do this easily within Lightroom (after importing everything, including the duplicate JPG files) that would be great. It would also be OK if there were an easy way to do this before importing the files (but hopefully this wouldn't involve having to visit every directory looking for filenames with both JPG and NEF extensions).
Does anybody know of a way to do this (in Lightroom, or with some tool/script in Windows)?
In your command prompt, go to the folder and run this:
for /f "delims==" %r in ('dir /b *.nef') do del "%~dpr%~nr.jpg" 2> nul
Basically, it goes through the current folder, runs through the .NEF files, and deletes the JPG if present. It ignores any errors if the JPG is not there.
If you want subfolders, include "/s" (without quotes) in the dir command.
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Are there any free Windows programs to get a live view for a Nikon D700 in tethered capture mode? I'm trying to hook it up to my computer monitor for some studio shooting.
No free software exists to do this on Nikon cameras in Windows.
The only two options I know of that allow live view are Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 and NKRemote by Breeze Systems. They both run between $150-200USD. If you do not want to spend any money, free options exist but they do not offer Live view as far as I have found.
If you are really in a bind, and need a free option, you can download free trials of either Camera Control Pro 2 or NKRemote and try each out for 30 days.
I would try out DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control. They have quite a few iterations of the software, and it has been around for a while. It gives you similar functionality to the Nikon Camera Control software, but for free.
I have not used the software first hand, but you can tell by the comments on the download page that people are very happy with it. On the compatibility chart it does have the D700 listed as compatible.
It offers control of the camera, and time lapse functions as well. You can shoot RAW or JPEG in it as well.
It does not look like live view is offered, which is unfortunate. But I am not sure of this so I would download it since it is free and find out for yourself.
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From here : http://registry.gimp.org/node/25219
!!! The attached executables are Linux files. DO NOT download them for Windows. Also do NOT download the Python scripts for Windows (they won't work with the old resynthesizer.exe.) I have built the resynthesizer and tested on Windows, but have not finished an installer for Windows. If you are adept at building, download the source and build Windows executables yourselves.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to build from source. Is there an already built of installer for Widnows around here ?
It doesn't look like there's an official one. The README file for the new version (wow — about time!) says
Building on other platforms
(On the darkside OS, who hijacked a common word for fenestration)
I use MinGW and MSYS. (Use mingw-get to download gnu build tools perl, automake etc.) However it doesn't install plugins properly. You will need to copy files to the proper Gimp plugin install directory, typically from:
c:\MSYS\1.0\usr\local\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins to: c:\Doc...Settings\yourname.gimp-2.6\plug-ins
.. which suggests that there's no official binaries or installer, and that the programmer isn't particularly interested in that. MinGW is a relatively — when compared to very complicated alternatives — system for building unix-like programs on Windows, or building them on Linux to run on Windows. And MSYS is a shell system for basically making the Windows command line more like Linux. Honestly, I'm not sure why one would do that instead of just running Linux.
In the comments to the registry.gimp.org page you link to, though, there's this one, where someone named "samj" has built binaries. If you trust running random programs from comments, you can download the binaries from there. It seems reasonably trustworthy to me, really — the install instructions in the included lisez-moi.txt file look legit (and are basically understandable even if, like me, you don't speak French) — basically, copy all the files to C:\Users\[username]\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins and it should work. (You'll probably also need Python for Windows installed — that's a whole 'nuther thing.)
Or, you know, you could switch to Linux where this is all just trivially easy. :)
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From here : http://registry.gimp.org/node/25219
!!! The attached executables are Linux files. DO NOT download them for Windows. Also do NOT download the Python scripts for Windows (they won't work with the old resynthesizer.exe.) I have built the resynthesizer and tested on Windows, but have not finished an installer for Windows. If you are adept at building, download the source and build Windows executables yourselves.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to build from source. Is there an already built of installer for Widnows around here ?
It doesn't look like there's an official one. The README file for the new version (wow — about time!) says
Building on other platforms
(On the darkside OS, who hijacked a common word for fenestration)
I use MinGW and MSYS. (Use mingw-get to download gnu build tools perl, automake etc.) However it doesn't install plugins properly. You will need to copy files to the proper Gimp plugin install directory, typically from:
c:\MSYS\1.0\usr\local\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins to: c:\Doc...Settings\yourname.gimp-2.6\plug-ins
.. which suggests that there's no official binaries or installer, and that the programmer isn't particularly interested in that. MinGW is a relatively — when compared to very complicated alternatives — system for building unix-like programs on Windows, or building them on Linux to run on Windows. And MSYS is a shell system for basically making the Windows command line more like Linux. Honestly, I'm not sure why one would do that instead of just running Linux.
In the comments to the registry.gimp.org page you link to, though, there's this one, where someone named "samj" has built binaries. If you trust running random programs from comments, you can download the binaries from there. It seems reasonably trustworthy to me, really — the install instructions in the included lisez-moi.txt file look legit (and are basically understandable even if, like me, you don't speak French) — basically, copy all the files to C:\Users\[username]\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins and it should work. (You'll probably also need Python for Windows installed — that's a whole 'nuther thing.)
Or, you know, you could switch to Linux where this is all just trivially easy. :)
Check more discussion of this question.
To handle a large number of pics a a smooth and efficient workflow is needed. I am currently doing the following, which I find too cumbersome and annoying. This has a bad effect on my pics, which don't get the attention that would deserve.
I'm on Windows 7 with a Canon camera.
Import from the CF card via the canon utility ZoomBrowser EX. I don't particularly love it but it is relatively unobtrusive.
Three alternatives for the raw files
of these DPP appears to extract the best information from the raw files (they appear more realistic and sharper) but it offers only the most basic functionality. UFraw and Rawtherapee are much better, if only I were able to achieve the same quality of DPP. I will add that I have noticed this only in some photo, maybe because it is not so apparent, or because I have begun shooting with a new lens, or I simply got better at spotting the differences.
Import to gimp: this depends on the source. Both ufraw and Rawtherapee directly call gimp, while with DPP I have to convert to TIFF. This has a huge impact in terms of disk space: from a 20M raw file to a 80M TIFF.
First thing in gimp: save to its own native format (xcf) and kill the tiff if importing from DPP. This is needed because I am doing backups and so all these useless TIFFs floating around annoy me.
Proceed to work on the image as I am capable of (that is, not much! :-) )
Backup everything on an external hd
Empty the CF card
This is not efficient or smooth. How can I improve it?
Please note that given the limited set of features of ZoomBrowser I am not systematically tagging/starring the pics. This is going to bite me, I am sure.
PS: I am still trying to pinpoint the differences between DPP and UFraw/RawTherapee. It could be the subject of another question...
In general - switch to a one program solution like Lightroom.
It gives pretty good results (I don't know how it compares to DPP though, but it must be at least comparable given its popularity). It will handle the import, tagging, sorting, labeling, and most of your basic edits to the photo all in one program without keeping multiple copies of the image around. It will do all the color corrections, spot removal, sharpening etc without the need to go into Gimp. (If you want to start cutting stuff out of the image or adding stuff in, or selective color, or stuff like that, you'd still need to go to Gimp though. But that stuff should be much more rare.)
I'm a fan of Gimp, I am. But both GIMP and Photoshop excel at making detailed changes to one photo at a time. Lightroom ( or heck even Picasa) allow you to do many of the basic modifications in stride, rather than stopping to mess with switching files around.
Picasa is an option, but really Lightroom is in a whole different league. I was a big Picasa + Gimp fan for awhile, but Lightroom is just so much easier/faster.
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I have a Mac, my wife has a Win7 machine. Currently I take all of our photos and put them into iPhoto. There's about 35K images in there now. The problem is that they are all accessible only from my Mac and she has to wait for me to put the images on there, etc.
I'm willing to switch away from iPhoto. I know there are some tools that are cross platform (Lightroom, Picasa), but are there any that support a shared library? I can share a volume out via NFS or CIFS that we could both mount, but I want to avoid problems of (potentially) both of us hitting the image database at the same time.
The issue you are going to face is similar to any database-based solution: the issue is ownership over a file and if two systems are trying to change a file at the same time. This can often corrupt a database for systems that are not designed with this concurrency in mind, and most systems are not designed with this in mind. As mentioned above, there are some higher end solutions that are designed with this in mind, but they are expensive and typically designed with an agency in mind.
Assuming you do not wish to purchase an agency solution, Lightroom would do fine, if you did not wish to share the database and each others edits. In this case, you would simply share an external drive with the photos themselves, but each keep your own catalog of edits local to your system. I am not sure if Aperture works this way or not, others can perhaps chime in.
The only alternative to get something close to this function with Lightroom, is for you to share the hard drive of photos as above, but then, use the export/import catalog function of Lightroom to "share' the catalog between machines. So, have your wife export a catalog of images she has edited, and then you import them into your catalog...and so on. Not especially simple, but it will work, as long as you can put up with it.
Of course, if you can get by without sharing edits, then simply put all your images on a network accessible drive, point each copy of Lightroom at this shared drive and edit away. One note: when your wife adds images, they will not automatically be added to your catalog, but you can easily solve this by right clicking on the shared drive link in the Library view, and select 'Synchronize Folder" which will add any new images to your local catalog.
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