[Charlotte]

Thanks for following up with the test shots OP

I discovered something interesting last night ... I opened a pic "Two Flowers" (later uploaded) first in Picture Project, then also in PhotoPlus. The 2 looked completely different!! The Picture Project one looked much better + more like what I photographed; the PhotoPlus one looked washed out with a strong yellow cast (which I've noticed a lot lately). Of course, I used Picture Project in this case, not PhotoPlus It did make me think "geez, I've been making work for myself, using PhotoPlus instead of Picture Project all this time!" (I now see that the pic has a cyan cast, but that's easily fixed )

Sooo I think Picture Project is optimized for dealing with D50 shots, but it's a pity it doesn't have much in the way of editing tools

Therefore, PhotoPlus apparently does not use the info from the camera settings However, I will have a look (in a minute) to see if I can change that, as I prefer it over Picture Project, since it has all the tools for editing

Interesting little exercise

[orangepeel]

Indeed, PictureProject does use the settings from the camera. So does Nikon Capture NX.

As for your colour cast, that's caused by both softwares different interpretation of the white balance. Given Nikon made the cam, there's a good chance their interpretation is correct. However at the end of the day it's down to your own preference.

This thread went into the differences in white balance processing and sort of came to a conclusion about the cause...
Nikon Plugin Vs Adobe Camera Raw



You could use PictureProject to export to TIFF then edit that with PhotoPlus. It's a bit of buggering around but will maintain the camera settings.

[Charlotte]

Not keen on shelling out for Nikon Capture if I can use a prog I already have You end up with a prog to upload to pc, another prog to view + sort/tag etc., another prog to edit/export ... Wish one did all ... Let me guess, Nikon Capture does it all

Yes, both prog's showed a colour cast, one had cyan, the other yellow. I'm sure you're right about Picture Project being closer to the mark. There is a hue adjustment facility in-camera (under-utilised, at least by me), I might have a play + do some test shots to see how to use this to best advantage from pic to pic, i.e. I suspect the cyan cast is more likely in shade or other cooler WB environments, + the yellow more so in warmer conditions, but I'm guessing at this.

Yes, I followed the other thread at the time (just didn't have anything meaningful to contribute to it )

Now there's a good idea, edit in TIFF to retain quality then, last thing, export to jpg for uploading to pixalo

Oh, just remembered, I also discovered that when I export from Picture Project, the image retains the exif data, but exporting with PhotoPlus wipes it. This topic came up in other thread, now to find it + report back there ......

[orangepeel]

your colour cast is very likely to be white balance set wrong. If the thumbnails are showing it then you had it set wrong in camera. When you load the NEF in PhotoPlus you should be given the option to change it.

Note that exporting to TIFF in pictureproject won't let you change the white balance.


As for your missing EXIF. It may be similar to CS2 in that export for the web removes the EXIF - to save space. To maintain it in CS2 you have to "save as" and select JPG as the filetype.