Capture NX vs. Raw Magick Lite
You’re looking at the results from two of the best RAW converters for Nikon NEFs. At the left is from Nikon’s own Capture NX, and at the right is RawMagick Teams’ Raw Magick Lite.
These aren’t really straight conversions, of course. There is little post-processing (a little curves and levels processing to bring up the midtones and colorspace converted to sRGB for consistent color across browsers).
(Click on the image for the larger version)
Few observations:
- Nikon’s conversion needs less tweaking
- Nikon’s conversion favors contrast in lieu of a less smooth gradation from shadows to highlights.
- RML recovers details (especially in the highlights) better. Not a lot, but noticeable.
- Nikon’s colors tend to be magenta-biased.
Until I tried RML, I thought NX does a brilliant job of NEF conversion, and I thought nothing comes close (though I thought NX does a HORRIBLE job of noise reduction).
So what do I use? Both. For critical work, I use RML…but for a quick conversion, I use NX.
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