Nikon D50By: Dave Etchells and Shawn BarnettNikon develops an "entry-level" SLR loaded with features for less than $750. (Body only) <<Video & Power :(Previous) | (Next): Test Results & Conclusion>> Page 16:Included SoftwareReview First Posted: 05/20/2005, Updated: 08/10/2005 |
Included Software
The D50 ships with Nikon's PictureProject software, as well as a 30-day free trial of Nikon Capture, their higher-end program for much more extensive manipulation of NEF-format images. Both packages are compatible with both PC and Mac computers, big kudos to Nikon for that.
PictureProject is a relatively new piece of software for Nikon (introduced with the D70 in 2004), replacing the previous Nikon View. Nikon had talked up PictureProject quite a bit prior to my first seeing the original 1.0 version, so I approached it with a pretty positive mindset. My initial reaction was disappointment over how clunky it was to use with NEF files, and its rather lightweight features, but as I spent more time playing with it, I found myself liking it quite a bit more. (Unlike some other reviewers, I do think it's a bit of a step up from Nikon View.)
Some of my negative reaction to PictureProject may be that I'm just not the sort of user it's intended for: It's clearly aimed at novices and first-time digicam owners, so it's long on automation of file import and simple organizational tools, but rather short on any sort of workflow to support effective use of NEF files, or for efficiently processing large numbers of images. Granted, Nikon wants to protect sales of their high-end Capture 4 software program, but I do think PictureProject could have been made a good bit more capable without treading on Capture 4's toes. As it is, I'm afraid that PictureProject puts the D50 at something of a disadvantage relative to the software package that ships with Canon's Digital Rebel, which includes Adobe's excellent Photoshop Elements right in the box with the camera.
That said, PictureProject does have some nice features for organizing your images, and I liked its email integration quite a bit. Also, Nikon has significantly enhanced its feature set in version 1.5 (the version shipped with the D50), so it now presents a much more complete set of capabilities for novice users who don't want to delve into a separate imaging application.
I don't normally review bundled software in my camera reviews, but given that many of the target customers for the Nikon D50 may never reach beyond PictureProject, will devote some time to it here. Here's a brief look at PictureProject's interface and a few of its features. (The screenshots below are all from the Windows version of the program.):
Main Screen
PictureProject is a reasonably competent organizing tool, you can assign keywords to images, tag interesting ones for easier recall, and group them into multiple "collections." (For instance, one collection could be "Family Birthdays," and another could be "Photos of Katie." Pictures from Katie's birthday could logically belong to both collections.) Images can belong to more than one collection, making it easy to create multiple groupings. The main screen shows an array of thumbnails, and you can mark individual pictures as being tagged for quick reference, protected, or hidden. Clicking the "Keyword" tab in the left panel lets you create keywords and assign them to images. Finally, you can search by file name, keyword, or date, and can restrict your searches to only those files that have been tagged, protected, or both.
By double-clicking on an image, you can edit it in several ways, including rotating, cropping, redeye removal, and adjusting its brightness, color saturation, and sharpening. You can also convert it to Sepia or Black/White, using the Photo Effects option.
The screen shots above show the controls available for each of the options in the Photo Enhance panel of the Edit screen. Nikon has added a fair bit to PictureProject's capabilities, but one huge omission is that there doesn't appear to be any way to adjust a photo's color balance. (!) This is a critical failure in my mind, because shots captured under incandescent lighting so often need adjustment to reduce the yellow cast that the camera frequently leaves in the image. Also, while you can now use any of the Photo Enhance tools on NEF (RAW) image files, the ability to adjust white balance on NEF images that was present in version 1.0 of the program now appears to have been removed.
Speaking of NEF files, that was (and still is) one of my primary beefs with the program. You can convert NEFs to JPEG format en masse, but if you want to save to TIFF, the only way to do so is by exporting the file to another program like Photoshop(tm). In addition to this one-at-a-time limitation on NEF file export to another application, if you want to make any adjustments to a NEF file inside PictureProject, it forces you to save the whole NEF file back to disk before you can go back to Organize mode, export the file as a JPEG, or transfer it to another application. There's no way to export a modified (or unmodified) NEF file directly from Edit mode without having to wait for the file to be saved to disk first.
File Menu |
Edit Menu |
Photo Menu |
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View Menu |
Tools Menu | Window Menu |
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Since I just mentioned the export capability (or lack thereof) in Edit mode, the shots above show the program's various menus. Version 1.5 added quite a few capabilities here, and a number of options that previously appeared under the Tools menu have now been moved elsewhere.
As you'd expect, PictureProject can display essentially all the information embedded in the file headers, including exposure information and even provides access to the IPTC fields, and version 1.5 has significantly enhanced this access. (Rather strange IMHO, in a very consumer-oriented program, as the IPTC fields are really only of interest to photojournalists or others working inside large organizations.) Apart from the IPTC data, the information available in version 1.5 is about the same is in version 1.0, but has been spread across more screens.
One of PictureProject's weakest points is its online help system. There's just not much there. (The screen shot above shows all there is to see.) While there's a pretty good electronic (PDF file) manual shipped on a second CD, I don't think it begins to make up for the paucity of help within the program itself. - And frankly, the electronic manual could stand to have better detail in several areas as well.
PictureProject's printing capabilities are actually quite nice. There are plenty of options for printing one or more images per page, and to include EXIF exposure information as well. Besides the screen shown above, there's also a screen oriented toward outputting index prints, which also includes the ability to show full EXIF data. (I could see myself using this to create hardcopy catalogs of my shots.)
Another clever, but optional, added-cost capability of PictureProject is its "muvee" option, which sets animated "slide shows" (for lack of a better term) to music, combining zooms, pans and fades of a selected group of images with a music track of your choice. The result is actually fairly appealing, and can be output to either MPEG1 or Windows Media Video formats, either for playback on the computer, or for inclusion in an email message. Sadly though, the muvee feature is only available in the Windows version of the application. Note too, that the muvee feature is only available as an added-cost upgrade from the free version bundled with the camera.
PictureProject includes a very nice email option, that takes care of resizing the images for you, and packaging them in an outgoing email message. You can select the size you want the emailed images to be, and whether you want to present them as a single index print photo, or as individual files. Where the original version of PictureProject apparently sent the emails itself, version 1.5 instead launches your email client for you, creates a blank message and attaches the image(s) you've selected to it. All in all, a very nice feature that I suspect even a lot of advanced users would use.
Finally, a new addition to PictureProject is the ability to burn CDs with your photo collections on them. You can either save the original photos, or you can "optimize" them for the CD, setting them all to the same size and image quality. In the "optimized" mode, you can also choose to include a QuickTime slideshow movie, and/or a MPV Slideshow document. Pretty slick!
Overall, as I said at the beginning, I started out expecting great things from PictureProject, became more than a little disappointed, but finally ended up liking the package fairly well. If you're an advanced user, you'll probably find yourself frustrated with its lack of an effective workflow for plowing through large numbers of images, tweaking as you go. It's wholly inadequate for working with NEF files, and I think Nikon has committed a serious error there, crippling PictureProject in that regard, to try to protect sales of Capture 4. This is one area where Canon's d-SLRs win hands down over Nikon's. The most inexplicable lack in PictureProject though, is the inability to make any adjustment to images' color balance (or contrast, for that matter), a very common need of even novice photographers.
Still, if you're primarily a "point and shoot" sort of user, PictureProject is a very nice little package. Given that the D50 is really aimed at first-time SLR users and young families in particular, PictureProject could be a good fit for the camera's primary market. Even for sophisticated users, it'd make a nice tool for the Significant Other to use to manage the family photo archives. All in all, a pretty nice little software package, likely to be enough for many novice users.
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