P: Display Focus Points

I didn' t mean it could cause me to abandon lightroon. I do as you suggest. When I want to check the focus point I start ViewNX. But I would find it more convenient if I could stay in lightroom. I thought it was not such a big thing if Apple can do it.

Why do you need to see the focus point? I've been shooting action for years and do not use it - there are too many moving parts in nikon focus acquisition algorithms to reliably draw conclusions from this data. I can see you maybe wanting to see which pocus point was used once in a while to trouble shoot - just use View NX - which is free.

This is a big feature creep area - it would be a lot of work to implement this for every manufacturer and model. Even Nikon cannot do this for their own models. When confirming View NX showed the focus point it would not show it for some of my older D2h files.

I find it difficult to believe this feature is so important you would switch software. I suppose we all have different priorities.

I#m coming from apple's aperture where the feature is available. Miss it a lot in lightromm. Always have to switch applications to check the focus point.

I just checked the Nikon SDK: focus points are *not* provided directly via SDK and must be read from Exif metadata. Also, the focus point info is different for different cameras and is not documented in the NEF doc included with the SDK. Its not rocket science to get at and interpret that data, but it would need to be "reverse engineered" for each camera model...

Definitely worth considering your motivation, IMO.

Being miffed at Adobe, or frustrated while learning Lightroom, or missing a few camera features, may not be good enough reasons in the long run.

I use CNX2 regularly by the way, and think 95% of the time Lightroom does a better job with those NEF files.

Back when Lr was at version 2 (and the Nikon camera profiles for Lightroom were young), I more often favored the NX2 rendering, but now - just the opposite.

Now I mostly use Nx2 for cooked editing (as external editor after raw conversion in Lr) because of the U-points. If Adobe invented a better auto-masking technology, or Nik allowed multiple adjustments to be tied to U-point selections in their Photoshop plugins, I'd ditch Nx2 altogether, but alas: that is not the case...

Anyway, if you want to consider a split workflow (some Lr, some Nx2), and you can get around the mental block to using lr-plugins, consider NxTooey.

PS - If there's an NX3, the table may turn again... ;-}
(or if CaptureOne decides to compete seriously with Lightroom for non-PhaseOne camera customers. (CaptureOne only supports tethering and automated lens corrections... for PhaseOne backs/lenses).

On the focus point issue ... I'm all for it ... however ... the Nikon SDK can be quite convoluted and Adobe has had a habit of not crossing certain lines that others will in accessing certain data points in proprietary image files ... why? ... I'm not sure ... just sayin' ...

There is no doubt that NX 2 does a great job with NEF files ... but after all it should, it was developed by/for the camera manufacturer ...

I have been a lifelong Nikon shooter (since 1974) and have turned my back on Nikon software ... other than the fact NX2 does a really good job with fine detail out of the box and the U-Point technology ... from a workflow standpoint ... I haven't found a Nikon software option that didn't suck ... working with 500-1,500 images from a wedding or 3,000-5,000 images from an all-day sports tournament is a total nightmare ... whereas, Lr handles these jobs quite well ...

With the advent of the v2010 process and judicious use of custom Camera Calibration profiles ... I don't see much difference, if at all, when comparing images processed in NX2 or Lr3 ... though YMMV ...

"I am testing Nikon Capture NX2 right now; it works much better with Nikon RAW files" - other than support for in-camera settings and metadata, I'm not so sure about that statement - how do you figure?

Also, C1 noise reduction is not nearly as good as Lightroom.

Not trying to change your mind, but sometimes the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence...

Best to ya whichever way you go...

I am testing Nikon Capture NX2 right now; it works much better with Nikon RAW files and does everything I want except it's not as good at going through 500 files at a time. My guess is that I will transition to Capture NX2 or Capture One over time, and rely on Bridge and/or Expression Media for browsing and/or cataloguing.

1 thing that might tide you over:

ExifMeta can display the IDs of which focus points were active. So, you can make a cheat sheet for yourself: shoot a bunch of photo with different focus points selected, and use ViewNX or CNX2 to display the focus points and draw them, labeled, on the cheat sheet. After a while you won't need the cheat sheet anymore - or you can shoot it and import into Lightroom for reference...