In another topic (D700 vs S5pro) on this board I mentioned already the main difference in the practical use of Capture and ACR for convertion.
When you open a NEF file in Capture NX you get very valuable information like in-camera settings(vivid, increased sharpening etc.) and curves opened in the RAW image you see in your screen whereas with ACR you get a neutral (or let me call it a "stripped down"-) RAW file where you have to begin from zero...
Often the NEF file with your in-camera settings applied are enough or require just a tiny bit of PP in Capture to make it as you want your final image to be, whereas convertion with ACR requires the whole procedure from zero.
Using the in-camera menu banks with their particular in-camera settings (f.i. increased sharpness and saturation or vivid mode for macro, or simply portrait mode for portrait) makes working with the the in-camera settings and Capture a great combination.
Underneath a screenshot of the same file viewed in Adobe PS3 and in Nikon ViewNX(same view in CaptureNX)... It's clear that you "see" the NEF file totally different in NX than in Adobe. In NX you open and see the NEF file with your preferences, curves and in-camera-settings applied, but while it's still NEF, you can still change everything... In this case you see in the NX window the file with "vivid" setting and sharpening +4 while in the Adobe RAW window you see the bare NEF file.
Next to that very important difference to reduce PP time I am also convinced that RAW convertion with Capture results in more detail, more accurate colours and less noise than convertion of a RAW file with ACR or other third party raw converters.
Steve Bingham, TMHO one of the most interesting forum members on the Dpreview Nikon forum section' wrote once a very interesting thread about the much more accurate "reds" that Capture deilivers after convertion compared with ACR. I will try to find the topic back and post the link here as soon as I can.
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