Nikon D7000 manual Nikon’s Applications and Utilities, Nikon View NX

444 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

those who have been using Nikon’s software exclusively get a feel for what you can do with the Adobe product.

The basic functions found in most of the programs discussed in this chapter include image transfer and management, camera control, and image editing. You’ll find that many of the programs overlap several of these capabilities, so it’s not always possible to categorize the discussions that follow by function. In fact, I’m going to start off by describing a few of the offerings available from Nikon.

Nikon’s Applications and Utilities

If nothing else, Nikon has made sorting through the software for its digital cameras an interesting pursuit. Through the years, we’ve had various incarnations of programs with names like PictureProject, Nikon View, and Nikon Capture. Some have been compat- ible with both the Nikon dSLR and amateur Coolpix product lines. Many of them have been furnished on disc with the cameras. Others, most notoriously Nikon Capture, have been an extra-cost option, which particularly infuriated those of us who had paid sev- eral thousand dollars for a Nikon dSLR, and found that we’d need to pay more to get the software needed for the camera.

Recently, Nikon has begun splitting their software offerings into separate programs that are sort of standalone products, but which integrate with the others. For example, if you bought Nikon Capture NX2 you found that the program didn’t really capture anything, as the previous Nikon Capture 4 did. If you wanted to operate the camera remotely, you needed to buy the off-shoot program, Nikon Camera Control Pro, which cost even more money.

The next few sections provide some descriptions of the Nikon software you’ll want to use with your D7000.

Nikon View NX 2

This latest incarnation of Nikon’s basic file viewer is better than ever, making it easy to browse through images, convert RAW files to JPEG or TIFF, and make corrections to white balance and exposure, either on individual files or on batches of files. It now includes Nikon Transfer and a movie editing tool, and works in tandem with Nikon Capture NX2, as you can open files inspected in View NX in one of the other pro- grams—or within a third-party application you “register.”

First and foremost, Nikon View NX is a great file viewer. There are three modes for looking at images: a thumbnail grid mode for checking out small previews of your images; an image viewer mode (see Figure 13.1) that shows a group of thumbnails along with an enlarged version of a selected image; and full screen mode, which allows you to examine an image in maximum detail.