Aperture 3 – Nikon D200 Presets
Okay, okay – I am cranking these out as I get time. I do not live on the site. These should be pretty good considering I have a D200 and a bunch of images to profile. Here are a few of the Nikon Capture NX2 Picture Control settings for Aperture 3 – for the D200. They are close enough for rock n’ roll and should give you a good idea where to start for the Nikon color rendering for this camera. As usual they are FREE. Would love to see what you guys come up with for this camera.
Here is the download Aperture 3 Nikon D200 (610). On another note I have been getting a lot or requests for D300 and D300s presets – no problem but someone sent me ONE file – I think I have that file nailed but really need some diversity so get in touch if you would like these and have a couple more files to send me.
RB





Thanks Robert, I know it is free but will make a pay pal donation for the work
Frank – no need for that – just enjoy them and let us know if they work okay for you and if not what is going wrong.
RB
You *don’t* live on this site? Could’a fooled me.
Seriously, this whole AP3 series has been some excellent work, much appreciated.
If you’re interested, I could send you some D5000 files to play with, when things slow down. I want to mess around with them myself first to see what I can come up with. Right now they’re looking way too saturated with default presets, but I haven’t really done much to them yet.
@rob,
Sure send me a couple NEFs.
RB
Thank you so much for releasing these. The D200 is my camera of choice for now so I’m ultra keen to see how these presets look with my images.
Thank you.
mark,
Let me know how it goes. And… If there are any issues.
RB
RB:
I would have to say that I am extremely impressed with the presets included in A3 and am looking forward to what experts like you put together. I have applied some presets and then proceeded to lift and stamp these to lots of photos and the process has been fast and seamless. This is indeed a very good feature which kind of played catch-up with Adobe applications, but which was implemented in a way that flew by (with the previews) anything Adobe has on the table right now.
mark,
one other thing – the reds/yellows may be off – seems the A3 rendering changed a little – I will through up an update tomorrow or tues.
RB
Hi …thanks for the great work. I’m getting into Aperture for the first time and your site has been a good resource.
I can provide a few D300 files if you want…Does the address in your “About me” section good for this one ?
Ben – yep.
RB
RB,
Many thanks for these. I have just begun exploring Aperture 3, and your presets are wonderfull.
I always liked the jpg rendering inside nikon bodies, but I was perfectly happy with what I could achieve within Aperture. These presets are better than my approximations and a real time saver.
I never knew that color settings differed so much from body to body, though. I always presumed nikon had a pre-defined set of profiles that they used in each body. So I’m looking forward to your D3/D700 presets.
Best regards,
Peter
Peter – unfortunately they do with Apple CoreImage – god knows why.
General rule of thumb is that older cameras have too little contrast/brightness/saturation and the color a little off while some newer cameras have too much.
Sky blues need to go toward purple a little.
Greens need to go toward blue
Yellows need to go toward red
Reds sometimes need to go toward yellow but not always.
On some camera’s it is easier to use RAW fine tuning and turn the hue boost all the way down – this fixes the blues but… on some cameras this puts the greens and yellow so close together that you cannot get them to separate in the right ranges to fix other things.
RB
Thanks Robert, the preset works seamless and fast speeds up the workflow
Frank as soon as I have some additional samples I will put a whole set of D300 presets out – I am also putting up a screencast today to go over one approach to dealing with it.
RB
Rob,
Thank you for the D200 presets. I will play with them – especially the work you have done on colors.
I have been generally unimpressed with the must-use-CNX-to-get-good-images as I have found it easy to boost saturation and contrast, as needed, and I have found that it varies with the lens.
I thought that this might be a strong argument for trying Lightroom 3b, but I found that I tended to prefer the box stock ACR settings over their presets.
Hmmm, there may just be a small argument that the advantage of RAW is that you CAN have it your way!
Thank you again for your hard worl!
DiploStrat
DiploStrat,
The big issue I have with Apple’s interpretation is that the color is off in strange ways. Sometimes the yellow green crossover is impossible to deal with in certain images – These presets do nothing to the yellows for that reason. I have another set that do yellows as well but for some images it is either or. If you want the set with the yellows included I will be happy to put those up as well.
The yellow/green crossover is definitely an issue with the Apple rendering – some greens go so yellow with yellows going so green they actually are with in 1 – 4 degrees of each other when they should be separated by like 10 degrees from a hue perspective. This is downright WRONG not just a taste issue. I explained my position on this in a recent post – all “taste” aside – some of the decode is absolutely dead WRONG. That is my issue NOT silly things like contrast/saturation.
RB
I’m very much looking forward to the D3 and D3s presets
Thanks a lot for the presets. Is there a chance you could make some D90 ones?
Sanjeev – I am working on it but need some more files.
RB
On Color – despite a few years in IT, I don’t know the internal processing flow of a Nikon (or other) camera, but I suspect that it may be multi stage:
– RAW decode
– Color
– Bells & Whistles (Contrast, DLite, etc.)
(Not that different from Aperture.)
In this case, a third party RAW decoder which addresses only RAW issues may never address the color issues. We know that Nikon buy many of their sensors from Sony, but I have never seen any comparisons between Nikons and Sonys that use the same sensor. In any case, I have never heard anyone comment that RAW files from Nikon and Sony look the same.
Everyone comments on Nikon’s secret sauce; I wonder if it is, in effect, an extra stage, after RAW decoding, that Apple (and Adobe?) simply skip? This might tend to argue, as you have done elsewhere, that third party RAW decoders need an additional color balancing stage. Ironically, this stage might be easier to write than the actual demosaicing. A little Mark One Eyeball and some sliders and you should be good to go.
Again – comments from someone who barely knows what he is talking about.
DS,
ACR nails the colors since the beta for 4.5 (two years ago) I do mention that in my latest post on NEF and Apple.
RB
I would love to have the presets for the Nikon D90. Keep up the good work !!!
RB,
what kind of files for D90 would you like to have? I could send you some.
Thanks for your efforts!
Sanjeev
Thanks for the D200 presets, as well as all of your efforts. The general rule of thumb comments above are also very interesting.
Echo Sanjeev’sand JPV’s comments about D90 presets. Of course, all of us will want them for whatever body we have. Maybe “The Definitive Guide To Aperture Image Adjustments” with presets included? I know you would sell at least one copy.
Steve
Steve – It will be out soon. I held off on releasing an adjustment eBook because I felt that it would change A LOT. I was right – same thing with metadata. I am working like 24×7 on Ap3 right now. I do not want to make the mistake of just jamming something out there without really really getting to know it extremely well first.
Probably a really bad business decision on my part but… The kind of crap that I see pushed out there makes my head spin in many cases.
RB
I created a D90 preset for myself that I have shared in http://lineargamma.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/aperture3d90/
Hi there Rob,
I’ve only just discovered this site and am finding it very interesting; thank you!
I was wondering if you needed any D300s and D700 NEFs? If so, how many and what subject matter would be the most useful?
Cheers,
Mike.
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