Complete Guide to the Nikon D200- P22 pot

The Creator tab allows you to specify which programs are used for certain actions within View normally, View assigns Capture as the image editor, so if you use Photoshop CS you’ll want t

Several things are important here:

• Be careful of the Delete option I think it’s generally wiser

and safer to reformat cards to remove files

• You’ll want Rotate ON If you’ve set rotation ON in the

camera, make sure it’s set to ON here, too

• IPTC data should be added If you’re selling your photos

or sharing them with others, both these items should probably be checked, as it allows for additional

identifying information to automatically be copied to the IPTC fields (Nikon promises a more complete IPTC implementation in future versions of View.)

The Creator tab allows you to specify which programs are used for certain actions within View (normally, View assigns Capture as the image editor, so if you use Photoshop CS you’ll want to change that)

One nice aspect of Nikon View is that it allows you to rename files and add IPTC information during the transfer (something I generally recommend; see “File Names and Folders” on page

<H163>):

1 Click on the Change button on the Nikon Transfer

dialog

2 In the dialog that appears, fill out the File

Destination and Naming options

3 If you want to change the file names during transfer

(highly recommended), click the Change radio button and then the Change button under the File naming

section and select your options

4 Click the OK button when you’re done and you’ll be returned to the File Destination and Naming dialog

5 Perform the same actions for the folder name (e.g change the destination folder as desired)

6 Click on the big yellow Transfer button to start the transfer

If you asked to Start Nikon Browser in the Transfer window,

when the transfer completes you’ll be taken to the Browser window, where you can then view, print, and rotate your images (if you still need to):

In the Browser window, you can only perform a few actions (the icon bar gives you quick access to them) At the top,

you’ll see a bar labeled Shooting Data Click on the > at the

left edge to reveal this information (or hide it) The data shown is for the currently selected image (highlighted with a selection rectangle around it)

By default, the left of the main window is a standard

hierarchical file browser In the two sample windows

immediately above, the first one has the file browser showing, the second doesn’t If for some reason you don’t see the file

browser window, choose Show Folder Tree from the

Navigation submenu on the View menu This allows you to

navigate amongst all the folders of images you’ve created (assuming you’ve been following my workflow suggestions, you’ll have a well-labeled folder for every shoot)

Finally, Nikon View has a rudimentary image viewer in it Double-click on an image thumbnail to invoke it:

When you doubleclick on

an image thumbnail, you get the Nikon Viewer window The icons at the top allow you to zoom in

or out and a few other basic options If you want

to manipulate the image

in any way, you need Capture, Bibble, Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2, Photoshop Elements,

or another image editing program

Things you can do with Nikon View:

• Batch rename images Select the images to be renamed,

and then select Rename Automatically from the File menu

• Search for a file Curiously, one of the attributes Nikon

allows you to search with is the Scene exposure mode Sigh The more interesting ability is to search by filename (which, of course, is one of the reasons why I want you to give files meaningful names in the first place) Select Show Search Control on the Navigation submenu on the View menu

• Create a slide show Select the images you want to show

(you don’t have to show everything in a folder) Select

Slideshow from the Tools menu Select your options

from the slideshow dialog that appears To hide the option dialog, press Shift+Tab together

• Email images or a contact sheet of images to a friend

Select the images you want to email Select Email from the Tools menu Select your options from the dialog that

appears Usually you’ll let Nikon View resize the images

to a smaller size for emailing (it’s not proper etiquette to send large files to someone unless they’re expecting them—most email services have storage limits for email,

and a handful of 1MB images can quickly fill their

mailbox and prevent other mail from being receivedF

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)

• Export images to a Web site Select the images you want

to create a Web page for Select Export as HTML Files from the Tools menu This brings up the first of three

dialogs you need to fill out:

This first dialog is about the overall style of Web page that will be created Here you set the size, style, and number

of images per page (plus a title for the page)

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Proper etiquette, even for someone you know, would be to ask before sending and tell them what size the images will be Better still would be to use a public posting service, such as pbase ( http://www.pbase.com ) and simply email the URL to the recipient Since we’re on the subject, I should warn you that my email has very aggressive filters on it If you want me to look at an image, post a modest sized version of it on a public posting service that doesn’t require an account to enter, and send me the URL via email

The second dialog defines what information appears with each image (filename, date, capture data, etc.)

The final dialog tells View where to create the new HTML pages It’s usually safest to save to a new subfolder so that everything for a set is grouped together in the same place rather than mixed with the rest of your Web pages

• Invoke an image editor Select an image (or images)

Choose Edit from the File menu to invoke the editor entered in Preferences Choose Edit using other program from the File menu and point to the editor you

wish to use if you want to use something more

sophisticated

Note: What’s the difference between Nikon Editor and Nikon

Capture Editor? Well, the first is free and comes with Nikon View It contains basic controls only (you can change white balance and exposure for NEF files, for example) Nikon Capture Editor is part of Nikon Capture and is a very sophisticated image editing program Nikon Editor (the free one) isn’t enough for serious post-processing work If you’re trying to conserve cash, Adobe Photoshop Elements would

be the logical choice to use instead

Earlier in the book I discussed IPTC information (see “IPTC”

on page <H161>) Nikon View allows you to append basic camera information into the IPTC fields, which I discussed above, but it also allows you to add both simple and complex

IPTC captioning information Select IPTC Information from the File menu and you’ll get the “simple” dialog:

For most uses, this is probably enough (note that I’ve added several of my keywords here, which is how I search for

images later) But if you want to get the full spectrum of fields

you can enter, click the Detail button and you’ll get this

screen:

If you’re entering IPTC information for a group of images and most of the information is the same for each photo, note that you can “save” and “load” information For this Death Valley shoot, I saved all the items except for the Caption, loaded them for all the images then went through and wrote captions for each Other programs exist that do a better job of this than Nikon View, but View isn’t a slouch, either A lot of people overlook the many features that are hidden underneath View’s simple interface, and this is one of them

Before we move on to Nikon Capture, let’s take a quick look

at the free Nikon Editor just mentioned (I’ll use a D70 image here, but the D200 is also supported just fine)

Above is a screen shot from a single image opened from Nikon View I’ve expanded everything that can be expanded,

so this is it folks—everything you can do is here to be seen

At the left is a standard tool palette, with icons for save, open, copy image adjustments, paste image adjustments, zoom, rotate, crop, move (using hand cursor), open in Photoshop, and redeye elimination, amongst others If you can’t figure out what is what, each tool’s name is revealed if you have your cursor hover over it

Tip: Cropping usually trips up newcomers to Nikon’s software

You select the crop tool (rectangular marquee) and then select the area of the image you want to keep The image area outside the selected rectangle darkens to show that it isn’t part of the final image To change the crop, grab the side or corner and drag it to a new position (or drag the middle of the crop to a new position) The real sticking point is: how do you cancel the crop? Press Command-D

(or select Select Entire Image from the Image menu, or

double-click outside the crop area) It really is that easy But

it usually stops newcomers dead in their tracks, as it doesn’t quite work the way other image editing software does

The main image window is in the middle, and I’ve opened the

Shooting Data display above it (This image was taken at the

sand dunes in Death Valley National Park at a workshop, by the way.)

On the right is a tool palette with four basic areas of control (if the individual controls aren’t showing, click on the arrow just

to the left of the palette name to open it) Here’s the full extent

of the imaging tools:

• Auto Contrast (Off, With color change, With no color change) This is basically Nikon’s attempt to provide an Auto Levels type of control While I never use it, it does

sometimes make for some very interesting effects if you

select With Color Change This is a control worth

exploring, but unlike Photoshop’s automatic controls, it doesn’t find the “right” solution very often

• Sharpening (Off, Low, Medium, High) Your standard

Unsharp mask control Note that the image may already have been sharpened and this would be adding

sharpening Since you don’t have any control over the parameters used, I’d tend to avoid this control if possible

• Effect (None, Black and White, Sepia) A quick way to

make a monochrome image out of a color one It appears that Nikon simply throws away the color information rather than optimize the conversion, but this control is fast and easy and quickly lets you see the basic shell of how the image will look in black and white For more

sophisticated ways of generating black and white, see

decent, though

• Image Size (enter a new size) Allows you to scale the

image to a smaller or larger size Nikon’s resizing abilities have always been overlooked by most people They

actually produce quite decent results (from well done original images) at up to about 2x In general when

downsizing, try to stay in divisible-by-two or by-four sizes, though

• Red Eye Correction (Automatic, Click on eyes)

Works only with 8-bit JPEG images, but allows either automatic or quasi-automatic removal of red-eye

Generally, Click on Eyes is my usual choice here This

works better than the in-camera Red-Eye Reduction

options, and is about as fast and convenient as red-eye correction gets

• Brightness Changes the overall brightness of the output

image (not to be confused with exposure compensation, which changes the underlying data) I’m not a fan of using

a crude, overall control like this to fix image defects

• Contrast Changes the overall contrast of the image

Again, this isn’t the method I’d use to fix image defects

• Red Varies the amount of red in the image

• Green Varies the amount of green in the image

• Blue Varies the amount of blue in the image Using RGB

channels to control color shifts is a bit like using a sledge hammer to move a wall stud Very crude, plus you’ll need

to understand how the colors interact to form the full spectrum of colors

• Exposure Compensation Allows after-the-fact exposure

modification for NEF images Note that you aren’t really changing the exposure, but the underlying linearity curve for the data Blown highlights are not recoverable

However, you can recover a missed exposure by as much

as –2 stops or +1 stops with relative easeF

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• White Balance (Unchanged, Auto, Incandescent, Direct Sunlight, Standard Fluorescent, High Color Rendering Fluorescent, Shade, Cloudy, Flash)

Allows after-the-fact white balance modification for NEF

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The actual range is -2 to +2, but beyond +1 there are objectionable side effects

images Note that you have no fine tuning control, only a basic set of choices Still, this is often enough to correct color temperature issues to a tolerable choice

Overall, Nikon Editor is simple, a bit crude, but has just enough capability to make it work in a pinch if need be If Nikon would only add the Levels/Curves adjustment from the Capture Editor, Nikon Editor would be usable for a lot of simple work As it stands, though, you’re going to want

something else One such something is Nikon Capture, which we’ll deal with next

Nikon Capture

Nikon Capture provides support for critical viewing and image manipulation of D200 NEF (and JPEG) format files Capture is now at version 4.4, and all examples and menu descriptions here assume that version (it’s the first version that supports the D200; so if you have Capture that you used with

a previous Nikon DSLR, make sure you have version 4.4 or later)

Nikon has a free 30-day trial version of Capture that you can download from the Nikon Web sites I strongly suggest that you load this into your computer and try it While Capture is a bit different in user interface than most software you’re used

to, it’s easy to learn and it has features you won’t find in other products

While I think Nikon should have provided Capture with the camera—Nikon’s software is much more mature than the competitor’s, so it’s a potential selling point—the program has undergone considerable revision and refinement over the past few years, which I’m sure wouldn’t have happened without the added revenue

Capture has two primary roles:

• Converts NEF files into usable images (JPEG, TIFF, direct Photoshop transfer)

• Provides direct control and setting of the camera

Plenty of competitors exist for the first function (see “NEF Converters” on page <H692>”), though Capture holds its own against all comers What is unique in Capture, other than a few manipulation tools, is the second function: not only can you take pictures from the computer, but you can make settings from the computer, as well Hidden amongst that ability is another: you can save camera settings files and load them into the camera with a couple of clicks For cameras that are shared, this is a godsend But even for the rest of us, it gives us the ability to save and name a few common camera configurations and get them back without having to thread through every control of the camera

So I’ll repeat: take a look at Capture I’ll bet that most of you will find that there’s something there that is useful and worth the money

Controlling the Camera

Once Nikon Capture is running with a camera connected to

the computer, choose Show Nikon Capture Camera

Control from the Tools menu and you’ll see a display that

looks like this:

Things to note in the window that appears: