Nikon View 6.2.6 - Another Snail

I think that Nikon's software is written to take advantage of either Windows or the Intel chip instruction set, because it runs fine on my 3Ghz Dell. However on a dual processor Mac 2gig G5 workstation, both NC and NV are slow. I rarely run them on my home computer, which is a 1.25 GHz eMac because they are ... glacial with anything more than one file open at a time.

 

I see. My installed versions are only NC 4.2.0 and NV 6.1.1. Stone age, huh.

I rarely use these except on the Dell, for which I don't have Photoshop. I just never warmed up to the NC way, although I concede that I have seen results that I may not be able to match with Photoshop. That's probably why I keep them on my machine ...

 

If it is any comfort I dont think it runs well at all on the Intel chipset either. I have enough machines here to attest to that. I think they have gone the chea route and programmed ti so that it is easy to compile for both worlds, results are that they for instance don't even support the graphics processor on the Windows PC's all work is done by the CPU

 

Nikon View has a tendency to hang if you work too fast in it. I use ACDsee 3.1 (yes it's obsolete but it works) to review my preview (jpeg) files really quickly and I use Nikon View's thumbnail to spot out the RAWs I want to work with. From there, I select an image and press ctrl-e to open it up in Nikon Capture (which seems more responsive than Nikon Editor).

I found if you do not have ~1.5 gigs of RAM on the Intel versions, you will start swapping. I tried to get away with it with only 768 MB but you are asking to hit the swap and that's when it gets painfully slow.

Try not to ever zoom in if you have < 1.5 GB of RAM. That's a surefire way to get a nasty slow down. My guess is the problem is Nikon Capture does a true interpolation of the RAW vs a quick preview like Capture One.

I cannot comment on the Mac version. Apple vs x86 with regards to price/performance, unfortunately, x86 wins. Nikon did not do a good job in streamlining the system to be very responsive either, so you really need as much as you can get, learn the nuances to work around, and feed it as much RAM as humanly possible. Well, when Apple finalizes their new x86 backed systems, then perhaps it will be semi-smooth sailing again.