Nikon Raw

[iiyama]

Gonna start playing with RAW having had the camera for a few months now.

Got a copy of PS, (CS3), will this suffice or do I need to get something else?

[RobDickinson]

What camera/raw files?

[iiyama]

D700 / NEFF

[RobDickinson]

I think your in luck, acr 4.6 (last one for CS3) supports d700 Neffs.

[SamHH]

Yes, Photoshop will do it. You use the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in (which I think is plugged-in as standard) to handle the files. The only problem is that each new camera has a new iteration of its manufacturer's proprietary raw format (in Nikon's case, .NEF). This means that the raw software has to be updated for each new camera, which Adobe take advantage of to obsolete their old software by making the latest version of Camera Raw incompatible with old versions of Photoshop. So if you have a camera that was released after CS3 was current, it might not work.

I think you can work around this by converting your .NEF files to Adobe's .DNG format, then opening them in Photoshop but I'm not sure exactly how you do this.

Edited by SamHH on Sunday 6th February 10:37

[iiyama]

Just had a play by trying to pull raw files from the card into PS. Cant get it to work. Files are seen by PS but the software wont open them.

Any ideas?

[SamHH]

Have you checked that Camera Raw is installed?

[iiyama]

No...where would I look to find out

ETA that I've just found where to look and yes, its installed

ETA again to say that V4 of Camera Raw is installed

[SamHH]

Make sure you've got version 4.6, the one with support for the D700:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp...
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp...

What message, if any, are you getting when you try to open the .NEF file?

[iiyama]

Looks like I've got a 'backup' copy of PS.

Message I get when trying to open file is :-

Unable to use the camera raw plug in. It is not compatible with this version of photoshop.

Also when I go to the help menu I can't open any of the following:-

Registration
Activate
Deactivate
Updates.

Would this be the case with a non ligit copy? Had it so long that I really can't remember where I got it from!

[Lucas CAV]

Download View NX2
It's free and will deal with your NEFs

[Simpo Two]

Lucas CAV said:

Download View NX2
It's free and will deal with your NEFs

It will let you see them but IIRC not do anything to them - wihch renders it entirely pointless IMHO.

[andy-xr]

Give Raw Therapee/Raw Magick a look as options on converters

[ian in lancs]

Get light room instead! Does most of what PS can do a lot cheaper and easier. Also can handle D700 and D300s NNF files direclly. For the occasional deep edit export a psd into PS. All edits made in either can be seen by either. LR also has a great library function.

[iiyama]

Capture NX2 is around half th price of Adobe Lightroom. Can anyone givr me a real world comparison?

[andy-xr]

iiyama said:

Capture NX2 is around half th price of Adobe Lightroom. Can anyone givr me a real world comparison?

I've found NX2 slow to load, and fairly global in what it does to the editing - you can go back and micro adjust stuff if you want to, but it chews memory. It's a top down process and I've always struggled with it as part of a workflow - it seems to be designed for one off editing rather than batches, although that could be pilot error

Also struggle to get it to export in a decent format to CS3/5 in any other way than saving a file as a TIFF then opening it up in Photoshop, meaning I have 2 copies eating up disk space and sat in memory. What it does to photos is pretty cool - it has some nice tricks in it and there's something extra that it gives the contrast when setting black points. Some good tutorials available too, and there's integration with Color Efex Pro (and some other 3rd party filter things) if you want them.

It has a library but it seems to be more on demand, as in, you load up what you want when you want it

LR by comparison blows it away, but as you've said, it aint cheap. I use it to catalogue all my shoots, I can write custom templates for colour/WB/highlights/camera RAW format etc and apply that to everything from the same set. If I can do that in NX2, I havent found it. A lot of what I do goes through LR as a basic edit, then out to CS5 for more complex things, I never use the clone/heal tools in LR although they are there, and they're a bit more granular and clever than the NX2 brush. It's ace for batch editing, you can customise it for whatever you want, and if putting it in as part of your workflow it can take an image, or a set of images from RAW through editing to showcase/display/print

I also use it as the main viewer for tethering on shoots to my Macbook, it's just been spot on pretty much all the time

Half way house would be the ones I've mentioned above - last I remember they were free

[iiyama]

Thanks Andy, good read.

Ill take a look at the others youve mentioned. Free is good and might well do me as I'm not a pro and am never likely to be!

[Simpo Two]

I thought the main benefit of NX2, other than the fact you can uninstall it, was that you can apply changes to selected areas.

However having NX2 in your computer is like having a breezeblock in your washing machine so it's a benefit I can live without

[andy-xr]

Simpo Two said:

I thought the main benefit of NX2, other than the fact you can uninstall it, was that you can apply changes to selected areas.

However having NX2 in your computer is like having a breezeblock in your washing machine so it's a benefit I can live without

The control point stuff is a great idea, but it just knackers up the RAM - Viveza in most cases on PS is cleaner and easier IMO

[ian in lancs]

I agree Nikon software is pants! After trying all their offerings I have found them all clunky and slow. Totally at odds with their cameras! they should stick to what they do best.