NX2 Sliders for Dummies... and other newbie questions

Richardflack

If this is the wrong forum, my apologies and could someone please point me in the wrong direction.. thx.

I have a real idiots question ... regarding the relationship between Exposure Comp, "Highlight Protection" & "Shadow Protection" as to exactly what they are doing and how they interact.
Hypothetically, would one ever for example turn all three 'up'? Is there a "mid-range" between Highlight & Shadow that is unaffected by either slider?

Is there an idiots guide to NX2?

Also, I see a number of people advocating Capture NX2 over Lightroom for processing NRW / NEF files. Capture NX2 is expensive and dying; does View NX2 have the same RAW conversion ie could one use that to convert to DNG before importing to LR?