Software Program

[JBO]

Photoshop Elements Vs. Capture NX

What is the better of the two, or are they about the same. Is there anything that you can do in one that you can't do in the other. I have narrowed my search down to these two programs. If you could help me out that would be great.

I have a D80 and I really want to have the ability to play around with my pictures a bit.

Josh

[jcon]

I dont recall if Elements has a trial but I know Capture NX does. So give it a try for yourself. Only you can truly decide which is "better" for you.

[K1W1]

They are totally different programs aimed at different markets. For want of a better description Elements is aimed at home or low end users has limited functionality and is designed for ease of use while Capture NX is a pro product aimed at the high end and gives the user total control over how they post process the image.
As advised both programs have trials so you should download them and try them out to see what suits your usage because only you know what you want to achieve.
There are many other programs as well that are worth looking at. In case you haven't seen these here is a subset of the more popular ones. Gimp is a free image manipulation program with many Photoshop like features, Irfanview is also free and can do limited image manipulation but is fabulous for other actions, Picassa can do limited image manipulation for free, Corel Paint Shop is used by many, Adobe Lightroom is worth a look, some people swear by Bibble and if you have money to burn the old standby Photoshop has a superset of Elements features.