I’ve been playing around with Nikon Capture tweaking some of the photos I took in the desert and noticed a substantial difference in the quality of exported JPG images as compared to Google’s Picasa. Using the default settings you can see that the Picasa version is very washed out and dull whereas the Capture version is much brighter with more detail. (see update below where I screwed up)

Exported using Google’s Picasa	Exported using Nikon Capture

Last year I used several exported photos from Picasa of the kids to make up our holiday greeting card and we weren’t very happy with the final results as they were dull just didn’t look good at all. This year I used Capture and the results were much better. Lesson learned.

[UPDATE: Dec 11, 2007] I screwed up. I guess that's what you get when you post at 12:30am. The original Nikon image I posted had Auto Contrast turned on. I've since updated the image which is now a straight export of the Nikon NEF file from Capture with the only tweak being a resize. Thanks to people's comments I went back and double checked.

This morning I copied a few Nikon RAW .NEF files to my computer and browsed over to Explorer to try and view them but they weren’t linked to any application. So off to Google where I found this post regarding a codec Nikon released for Windows Vista RAW file support. I’ll admit I had never actually run the Windows Photo Gallery application that comes with Vista since I don’t look at photos much on this machine but as soon as I launched it I was prompted for an update (as indicated in the blog post) which directed me to Nikon’s download page for the codec (that’s the English version).

I wanted to grab an image off of my home machine today so I fired up Remote Desktop and logged into my machine. Next I launched Picasa, my preferred photo software, and got this message: I can definitely confirm, it's indeed uglier but definitely faster. That's ok, I'll take the speed any day.

Google|Maps|Win32

If you've been reading my blog lately, you know I've been working to get my backup situation improved particluarly when it comes to DV tapes and photos. I've been using $g(Microsoft's SyncToy), one of the free Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP and I have to say it works fairly well and supports scheduling backups with Windows Task Scheduler using the -R command line switch for selecting particular file groups. I wish Microsoft would release the source code to apps like this so they could be picked up by the development community and further enhanced rather than releasing them with an unknown future. Prior using SyncToy I used a batch file and xcopy so to having a UI to configure targets source/destination directories is nice.

What do you use for syncing files/directories?

I'm a big fan of Google's photo organizer application Picasa but there is one improvement that I'd really like to see and that's facial recognition like what Riya has. Riya is photo website that has facial recognition features that actually work incredibly well, at least for the number of pictures I uploaded. I was actually surprised at how well it did in some cases and it left me wanting this feature in Picasa. I know Picasa is free and the likelihood of this happening is probably very low but it's that time of year and who knows I'd love to see it happen. This past year I averaged about ~360 photos a month, most of them of my two children and their mother although we've been to numerous one, two and three year old birthday parties and this feature could come in really handy. With all of Google's PHD's I'd guess at least a few of them have at least dabbled in facial recognition.

Btw, Riya it seems is chasing after the "looks like" market more than the photo market with like.com.

Nikon Capture. I feel like I've invested too much time into resolving this issue but once I tried Nikon's Capture application I came to the conclusion that even though it's going to cost me some money I think it's perhaps where I should have started. Capture has a 30 day trial period where the product is fully functional for 30 days. It has a batch mode that with numerous options for converting .NEF files to jpegs which produces very nice results. I've been using Picasa as my photo management app and unfortunately it's support for .NEF files is fairly lacking. While it can render this format it frequently distorts both thumbnails and full size images. I've read on the Picasa support forum that they are aware of the issues with RAW files and have been working to improve their support so hopefully we'll see an update in the not too distant future. I am disappointed that Nikon didn't see fit to include Capture as part of the D70 bundle given that the app they did include, PictureProject, is too rudimentary for my needs.

First, I'd like to thank those who commented on my previous post regarding this topic and I'll followup here with a few replies:

• Nikon Picture Project was the name of the application included with my camera and although I didn't play with it for all that long the time I did spend with it wasn't very satisfying
• I'm familiar with BreezeBrowser as I also own a Canon PowerShot G1 (which has collected dust since my father-in-law let me borrow his Canon 10D) and stumbled into it looking for a replacement for ZoomBrowser. What is it with these high tech camera companies and their lousy supporting software?
• Yes, Photoshop is just too darn expensive for me too
• John, thanks very much for the links!

After being disappointed with QImage not supporting my camera's (Nikon D70) RAW format and hearing comments to the effect that the UI won't likely be improved I'm moving on. I've been investigating Nikon Capture mostly given that it comes directly from the manfacturer although I'm not thrilled with the comments here relating to it crashing all the time.

On another note, I've been using Google's Picasa to manage my photos and believe it or not it handles my camera's RAW files just fine including thumbnails and exporting to JPG which you can also do in a batch mode. I'm so darn impressed with Picaca and can't believe it's free. I'm currently trying out it's companion Hello but the jury's still out as to whether or not it's something I'll use on a regular basis.

I wish I could find more information about the Nikon SDK for manipulating RAW images but Google hasn't yielded a lot of details (yet). I'd be interested to know if it supports COM or if it's just a bunch of header files. From the looks of things I'd have to contact Nikon directly and ask for the SDK or some such nonsense. Anyway, this saga isn't over yet and I'm sure things will continue to evolve.

One thing that is definately neat about working on an application development tool is to stumble into a cool application written using Delphi. Recently, I bought a Nikon D70 which produces NEF files (Nikon's proprietary RAW file format) and thus I wanted a tool to batch convert NEF files to JPG files for use on the web among other places. I started with a typical Google search and quickly found out about an application called QImage Pro which seemed to come up time and again in various conversations regarding NEF to JPG conversion. After reading a few reviews on this tool I visited Digital Domain Inc. the maker of QImage Pro and downloaded their demo. The first clue that the app was developed using Borland tools were the BWCC style OK buttons with the green checkmarks on them. A quick peek at the EXE and I found several references to Delphi 4.0 which put a big grin on my face.

Of course, the next thing of thought of were ways to make the application better like improving the flicker when the main window is resized, updating the appearance of the dialog menus and toolbars (the application it looks very "Win3.1-ish"), adding path completion to the directory combobox among others. Since I've just started playing with QImage I haven't yet paid for a registration key but just knowing the application is written in Delphi puts me that much closer.