Picture Control Utility

Picture Control Utility is an application designed to help you tweak and enhance RAW pictures that you capture using Nikon cameras that support NCP and NP2 custom picture controls.

The setup is quick, intuitive and does not require any special attention from your part. The program comes with a sleek and stylish interface design with hues of black and gray. The UI is comprised of larger working area and numerous other panels that you can undock and place in a location that meets your working style and preferences.

It is necessary to mention that the program works with several types of Nikon cameras, namely the ones that support NCP and NP3 custom picture controls. A few examples in this sense include COOLPIX A cameras, all Nikon 1 series cameras, D5, D750, D5000 or D6210. You can import the footage directly from your camera if you do not want to store them to your hard disk.

You should know that the application comes with several presets that allow you to quickly apply a set of modifications suitable for various situations, such as Portrait, Monochrome, Flat, Landscape, Vivid, Neutral and Standard. However, you should keep in mind that the utility does enable you to modify the various parameters – brightness, clarity, contrast, sharpening, etc. – manually as well.

Depending on the complexity of the project you are working on, you can open a few more tool panels. For instance, you can set the app to display the histograms of the RGB channels for the pictures you are working on and edit the distribution of the brightness, if necessary.

In the eventuality that you are using a Nikon camera for grabbing pictures, but feel like you need to have more control over the quality and output of the images, then perhaps Picture Control Utility might be the tool to lend you a hand.