What use is Capture NX?

Capture NX 2 is Nikon's high end RAW converter. It opens NEF, JPEG and TIFF files and also saves in those formats. It has many more adjustment options than View NX, and it can add and remove them in a way that is similar to Adobe Photoshop's adjustment layers.

The most unique feature of Capture NX is probably the "Control Points" that let you easily make adjustments to areas of the picture that are similar.

When it comes to high end RAW converters, like Capture NX, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, they all have their strengths. It is very difficult to tell which one is "best". Someone who masters any one of them, can usually do what s/he needs to do with that program. Anyone who does not fully master any one of them will probably not achieve the best possible result.

Capture NX is not an image editing program. You cannot use it to paste a face from one person onto another. Neither can you render patterns or add text strings to a picture. For such tasks, you need to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop or the gimp.

Capture NX can perform batch jobs on several pictures at once. However, it is not scriptable with any internal macros or AppleScript.