Triplets wrote:
Currently the only post processing software I have is ViewNX-i and CaptureNX-D that I get with my Nikon camera. I would like to concentrate on landscape photography so I'm asking which post processing package would you recommend?
Post a sample image with "store original" box checked.
Landscape photography is not just about software and post processing, though if everything else is in place - composition, picking the right time of day, NOT automatically going to an ultrawide lens to get a wider view, 100% familiarity with your camera, shooting raw, etc - then PP will help. But you have to understand landscape photography.
I suggest, in addition to considering Lightroom and Photoshop, you spend some time at a museum of fine art that has some examples of landscape paintings, especially some done in the Hudson River School style. Artists like Frederick Church, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Asher Brown, Thomas Moran, George Inness, Sandford Gifford, William Trust Richards, etc.
Looking at their work will give you a sense of more modern viewpoint and style, and how they used perspective to create artwork of the places they visited. I was born and have lived my entire life in the Hudson Valley, and have traveled to and hiked many of the locations they have painted, and it's always interesting how each interpreted what they saw. The one thing that is missing is a viewpoint that looks like it was taken with a wide angle lens. What you do see are images that look like a photographer used a Widelux camera (a panoramic camera with a moving lens and film advance to make a wide negative, taking in about 150 degrees of view angle). So learning to do panorama is probably important. You can do this in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Take a look at some of my stuff:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157681052964810https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157668362742222https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/23133190835/in/album-72157661435907591/https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157660158626169https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157657376971124https://www.flickr.com/photos/gene_lugo/albums/72157659811849805Most of these were shot with 45mm or 85mm or longer, as stitched panos. While you can get a pano "look" with a wide lens things in the distance will appear extremely far away, due to the extension distortion inherent in wide angle lenses, which gets worse as you shorten the focal length.
You'll see that using a longer focal length will give you a little bit of compression distortion, increase the drama and bring distant objects closer, and shooting panos will add "width" to the scene, without the undesirable effects of short lenses.
So to answer your question - yes - Lightroom and Photoshop. What's nice about Photoshop is that once you have done what you can to your image in a raw converter, there are many techniques that you can use to further develop interest and impact in your images. There will be naysayers that claim that is difficult. That part is true. It ain't easy. But every image I have posted either in this forum or online was finished in Photoshop. It's learnable, there are 1000s of resources that can help, most of which are free, and the results are stunning when you get good with the tools. A big part of learning Photoshop is taking the picture with the knowledge that you can do what you need to do to the image to realize your creative vision. And you can work your images to your style, which ultimately will develop as you learn.
So, yes to exploring panorama shooting and stitching, dodging and burning, exposing for highlights, using neutral density filters to smooth flowing water, etc etc etc. You are about to start doing some of the most difficult photography (if you stick to it and really try for excellence) - it is aside from birds, one of my favorite subjects.