If instead, you check the "use this instead" checkbox, then Capture NX will use your selected profile for all images, even though tagged with a different profile. When installing Capture NX you are asked what default RGB space you wish to use, but there is no need to obsess over the choice at that time since you can change it here later. If you open jpeg or tiff images from other sources though that do not contain a profile, Capture NX would have no way to correctly interpret what colors are meant by the RGB pixel data without you cluing it in as to what the profile should be. All images shot on any current Nikon camera will have profiles so this option generally gets ignored. The function of the Default RGB color space dropdown list depends on whether or not you also check the box underneath it to " use this instead of embedded profile." With the box unchecked, Capture NX will use the color space you select here when you open an image that does not contain an embedded profile tag. With few exceptions, you should turn black point compensation on and leave it that way. Turning this on tells NX to map the blackest black in your image to the blackest black in your printer profile and other color management conversion situations. The checkbox underneath the RGB profile to " Use black point compensation" similarly sets the default for this option throughout Capture NX. For most purposes though, you will ultimately want to select either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual intent, so picking one or the other here can make things marginally easier later. In a sense, it doesn't matter what you set this to since you can override this default as needed in the other dialog boxes we will look at this week. The dropdown list at the top of this tab allows you to select the default rendering intent to be used throughout Capture NX. Let's start by taking a look at the Capture NX color management preferences located on the menu under Edit > Preferences > Color Management. While not perfect, the situation has much improved with the release of Nikon Capture NX. Previous versions of Nikon Capture offered very primitive color management support.
You can find a lot more background on how all this works from some of the other weekly PhotoTips articles I've posted here on the site. Here's how it works.įirst, for those not familiar with color management, the idea is to be able to describe how every device ( printer, monitor, and so on) in your workflow reacts to color and then use the resulting profiles to translate between them to keep things looking consistent. Yes, the rumors are true: Nikon has finally given us a real color management implementation. I wanted to expand upon something I mentioned last week regarding the new Nikon Capture NX.