MACNOOK iPhoto is the consumer level solution and it really doesn't deal with RAW files all that well. There is no single solution that can "capture all Nikon camera settings, organize with ease and work in RAW." Unfortunately, the only thing that's going to perfectly capture all of Nikon's settings is Capture NX, and that's not much of an organizer. Lightroom or Aperture are going to allow you to keep track of and organize (like iPhoto), but will do a lot better job dealing with the RAW files. Both have downloadable demos-- try both. I thought I'd prefer Aperture, but I prefer Lightroom (by far) and suspect you might too (since you're using Photoshop as well). With Lightroom, I can drag a RAW thumbnail to Capture NX and make changes to the RAW file-- with Aperture, unless I'm missing something, this is not possible. Re Capture NX-- I don't have experience with the D80 and I probably wouldn't have bought Capture NX in the first place, but it came free with my D300. The interface is "different" (I'm being nice) and it's pretty slow, but acceptable once I had 4GB of RAM installed. The latest version does work with Leopard, finally. I thought it was worthless at first, but after learning and trying it with more and more photos-- let me tell you, nothing will ever be able to match CNX abilities with Nikon's images. Any photo where you want to pull out shadows, change a funky color cast in part of the picture... ANY "problem" picture, you'll likely do a whole lot better with Capture NX. I had high ISO shots that I thought were unusable until I ran them through NX. If the photo is already perfect or it's a sunset/sunrise shot, IMO Capture NX won't impress. Anything else, give it a try. Long story short-- I'd buy Capture NX in a heartbeat now. Oh, yeah-- and if you upgrade to Photoshop CS3, the RAW handling is worlds beyond CS2. Hope some of that helps. (Version 1.3.3) |