I couldn’t find any kind of name for this sculpture at Mt. Emblem Cemetery in Elmhurst, IL so for now I’m just going to title it my way but will keep searching to see if I can find the name of the artist and what s/he titled this piece.
Nikon Coolpix A, Adobe Lightroom Classic CC
I brought my Coolpix A and Rolleiflex 2.8D as my carry around cameras this past week. The Rollei had a roll of E100 in it and this scene had way too much exposure range for slide film and didn’t look terribly appealing in color anyways, so the Coolpix got the call.
Excluding printing, I ran this file through the whole gamut of my workflow in both NX Studio and Lightroom Classic CC. The image posted was the version from Lightroom. I’m still working on hashing out my thoughts on the two programs but here is where I currently stand:
- Lightroom’s import dialog is way, way more intuitive and powerful. NX Studio uses Nikon Transfer 2 which is just clunky and slow. Additionally, if there’s a way to add keywords at the time of import, I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. There’s one option that I still need to investigate that might solve this problem. Even if it does, it’ll make the import process even clunkier than it already is.
- Keywording after the fact is *also* seeming clunky for NX Studio. Again, something I need to dig into a little more. I’m still working through the manuals and trying stuff as I go and free time is still not something I have boatloads of, so it may be a case that I still just need to learn the user interface for more efficient operation.
- I’m still liking partly cloudy skies out of Lightroom. The clarity and dehaze sliders are just quick and effective tools for working with partly cloudy skies. I think I might be able to work on good output with some of Nikon’s tools. Even if I can get them dialed in, it won’t be as quick and painless as the LR tools.
- Apart from skies, overall image quality still goes to Nikon. By a lot sometimes. It kind of makes sense. Nikon doesn’t work with third parties like Adobe. Everything Adobe does has to be reverse engineered. So Nikon is already ahead of the game. Additionally, it makes sense that the equipment manufacturer would understand how to get the most out of the files from its products.
- Both programs deal with smaller files pretty speedily. Stuff from my D800 and Z7 can slow both programs down, though. Lightroom seems to be a lot worse in this respect, though. My computer isn’t the latest and greatest but it’s not terrible, either (i7, 16Gb RAM, SSD for the main drive). My files are stored on external drives and these are old school spinning drives. External SSDs are cheap enough to use for storage now, so I may see about swapping that out for a potential speed boost. There are probably some settings that I could optimize on both programs, too.
- Both programs have processing tools that I like and allow me to make the changes I want to but they can be very different in operation. Certain tools like sliders for basic tasks look and function similarly. Others like the tools for adjusting individual colors are wildly different. This is one area that the only way to get a feel for my preference is to spend a lot of time using both.
- Local edits are more easily performed in Lightroom. NX Studio seems like it would pair nicely with Photoshop or a similar program (Luminar, maybe?). That’s how early versions of Lightroom were though, too. So it’s not an unknown workflow for me. I’ve just gotten accustomed to the power and versatility that the current version of Lightroom offers. It’s rare that I need to go outside of Lightroom for processing these days.
- Exporting is easier with Lightroom. I’ve got presets set up that do what I want for most exports with two mouse clicks. Exporting with NX Studios takes considerably more clicks, a deal of typing and the attendant frustration of knowing how simple it would be in LR.
If it seems like I’m preferring LR, that’s definitely true. What I can’t answer yet is if I could live with the differences if Adobe forces my hand by dropping Lightroom Classic in favor of the cloud based Lightroom. At the moment, I’m going to say probably but I think I’d need to investigate some complementary programs like Luminar to see if I could get a functionality that I’m used to with my Adobe workflow. I think that’s possible but probably won’t be as streamlined as what I can do with the Lightroom/Photoshop combo. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as I keep playing around.