Contrary to several reviewers who can't seem to understand the concept of actually using the software before reviewing it, I have nothing but love for Capture NX. Since purchasing it NX has become an indispensable part of my workflow. The Raw conversion is far better than Photoshop's and unlocks all of the potential of the Raw format. With NX one can quickly and easily modify ALL of the parameters set in the camera at the time of exposure. White balance off? Not a problem. Tone compensation too harsh? No worries. And so on. As long as you have not fiercely blown out an image and as a result clipped the actual image data, just about any exposure related issues can be fixed.

Almost more important than the Raw conversion however are the set of tools that NX provides and the non-destructive approach that it uses. U-point is revolutionary, intuitive and powerful. Essentially, it combines an adjustable radius effectivity limiter with a smart selection algorithm. The algorithm seems to use brightness, tone and hue to decide how similar areas withing the affected radius are to the point that is chosen by the user. Depending on the degree of similarity more or less of the chosen adjustments are applied. Multiple U-point settings can be used within a single grouping - such that they exclude one another's effect, or in different groupings - in which case they are applied independently.

U-point is not the only means to edit images however. There is an entire suite of more traditional adjustment and selection tools as well.

Finally, different editions of an image can be saved, so there is no need to discard one set of edits to start from scratch or make additional changes. Simply save an edition and the current state is kept for later recall. Nothing you do afterwards will change the saved edition unless you edit that edition to incorporate future edits. All of this assumes you save the file in its NEF format (explaining why Nikon keeps its format proprietary since this allows them complete control over it). Additional to NEF, images can be saved as jpeg or tiff.

There is power batch mode operation as well. Essentially, any list of modifications can be made to a batch of images. An example of how this can be used would be to establish a standard set of adjustments, make them in batch mode to new images overnight, and drastically reduce the amount of touch time needed in actually editing them in person.

It is absolutely true that NX requires significant effort to learn. My guess is that this effort is about 10%-20% of that required to learn Photoshop to a similar level. Photoshop and NX are complementary, since there are some things than NX can not do, or do well. I usually make most of all my edits in NX, save the original as a NEF, then save a Tiff to open with Photoshop. I print from Photoshop as well, since I've learned how to achieve high quality prints with it and have no need to go through that pain again.

I see several areas for future improvement:

1. Clearly a universal binary before version 2 would be a great help since Rosetta is a memory hog and my MBP C2D is only marginally faster than a 1.5GHz G4 PB. It isn't slow, but it isn't as fast as it should be.
2. Customization is a key missing element. For example, I should be able to choose where my default "Save As" location is, rather than having the Pictures folder chosen.
3. U-point should be usable for any control feature. It should be an option just like the other selection tools. Having U-point apply to Unsharp mask or Noise reduction would be unbelievably powerful.

All in all this is a mandatory piece of software for serious Nikon photographers.