PM crop lost after NX2 edit

[devenh]

Under Windows 4.6, a crop applied by PM is lost after an edit with NX 2.1.

Deven

[Kirk Baker]

Deven,

Under Windows 4.6, a crop applied by PM is lost after an edit with NX 2.1.

That's to be expected.  Capture NX2 does not maintain all of our data through its edits.

-Kirk

[devenh]

Okay, so no fix is anticipated?  IOW, there is no "safe" place to store the crop?

Deven

[Hayo Baan]

Deven,

The safe place to store the crop would be in the NEF, using capture NX
I understand this is not what you were asking for, but the way I see the crops in PM is purely as a temporary thing. Just for quick appreciation of the crop result as a tool to help you weed out the good from the bad shots. Perhaps even to be saved/export as a jpg or so, but certainly not for "permanency."  For permanency you really need to go to an image editor like PS or Capture.

[Kirk Baker]

Deven,

Okay, so no fix is anticipated?  IOW, there is no "safe" place to store the crop?

We could store it in the XMP data, but embedding XMP is optional so it wouldn't always be a solution.  I'll think about it some more.

-Kirk

[TiggerGTO]

I just ran an NX2 batch job on a folder of NEFs to convert from Adobe RGB to sRGB and noticed that the PM crops shifted and/or changed size and aspect ratio.  Some of them may have even been lost completely -- it is hard to tell.

I realize that you have no control over what NX2 does to the NEF files, but it is unfortunate that the PM crops can not be maintained across NX2 saves.  Have you ever discussed this issue with Nik/Nikon development? Maybe in a future update, they could not trash your crop data.  Maybe (in some pretend universe) they could read and honor your crop data.  Alternatively, would it be possible to save your crop data the same way NX2 would as an edit step?  That way, it would not only be preserved, but recognized by NX2 the next time the file was opened without NX2 needing to do anything special.  My guess is that Nikon doesn't share that information.  It sure would be nice if they would open up the NEF file format including how they store the edit steps so their software could play nicer with others.

Thanks,
Danny

[Kirk Baker]

Danny,

I just ran an NX2 batch job on a folder of NEFs to convert from Adobe RGB to sRGB and noticed that the PM crops shifted and/or changed size and aspect ratio.  Some of them may have even been lost completely -- it is hard to tell.

I realize that you have no control over what NX2 does to the NEF files, but it is unfortunate that the PM crops can not be maintained across NX2 saves.  Have you ever discussed this issue with Nik/Nikon development? Maybe in a future update, they could not trash your crop data.  Maybe (in some pretend universe) they could read and honor your crop data.  Alternatively, would it be possible to save your crop data the same way NX2 would as an edit step?  That way, it would not only be preserved, but recognized by NX2 the next time the file was opened without NX2 needing to do anything special.  My guess is that Nikon doesn't share that information.  It sure would be nice if they would open up the NEF file format including how they store the edit steps so their software could play nicer with others.

Did you resize or crop the images in NX2?

We now store the crop information in the XMP data if you've instructed PM to write out XMP (embedded or sidecar) so I would expect it to stick now.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

We now store the crop information in the XMP data if you've instructed PM to write out XMP (embedded or sidecar) so I would expect it to stick now.

While this is a good thing in itself, there's one caveat: if you cropped, or otherwise changed the size of image in Capture NX, the PM crop will be applied on this new version and may not be what you expect anymore.

IMO this is not a problem at all as long as you see PM's crops as temporary and NX or other software's crop as permanent.

Yeah, it would be nice if PM and NX would be able to "exchange" their cropping info, but this is asking too much of PM/NX I think (yeah, I'm quite sure "reading" the NX crop info in the edit steps is doable/has already been done, but still...).

Cheers,
    Hayo

[TiggerGTO]

The only thing I did in NX2 is select a bunch of files in the browser, right click, load setting and apply a setting file to convert to sRGB.  Is it possible that I do not have my PM preferences set properly?  Which setting do I need to check to make sure the crop will stick the way you are describing?

Danny

[Hayo Baan]

The only thing I did in NX2 is select a bunch of files in the browser, right click, load setting and apply a setting file to convert to sRGB.  Is it possible that I do not have my PM preferences set properly?  Which setting do I need to check to make sure the crop will stick the way you are describing?

Did you update the existing NEF files when you did this, or did you save the results as e.g. JPG?
Don't think it matters anyway as long as your IPTC/XMP preferences are correct. Can you perhaps post a screenshot of your IPTC/XMP preferences so we can check?

Cheers,
    Hayo

[TiggerGTO]

I ran the batch job so the files were saved over the originals.  Here's my IPTC/XMP settings:



[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kirk Baker]

I ran the batch job so the files were saved over the originals.  Here's my IPTC/XMP settings:

Can we see your Files tab as well?

Thanks,

-Kirk

[TiggerGTO]

I was just posting to a Nikonians thread where we are talking about what people want to see in NX3 if and when it ever comes out.  I mentioned that I would like NX2 to play nicer with other applications, especially PM.  It reminded me about this thread.  I didn't realize that Kirk requested to see another tab of my preferences.  I'll try to remember to post another screen shot when I get a chance.

Thanks,
Danny

[Kirk Baker]

Danny,

I was just posting to a Nikonians thread where we are talking about what people want to see in NX3 if and when it ever comes out.  I mentioned that I would like NX2 to play nicer with other applications, especially PM.  It reminded me about this thread.  I didn't realize that Kirk requested to see another tab of my preferences.  I'll try to remember to post another screen shot when I get a chance.

It would be nice if they'd just make their crops compatible with Adobe's ACR crops which are written into XMP data.
It would also be great if they would also have an option to use XMP sidecars instead of embedding XMP into the NEF.  Adobe's products have various issues when XMP is embedded into RAW files.

-Kirk

[mklass]

Kirk,

Frankly, I want the XMP embedded in the NEF. I don't want a bunch of  sidecar files that surely will end up getting detached from the RAW file.

Mick