How to Work with Nikon Image Files (NEF) in Adobe Photoshop

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By Richard Burke
eHow Contributing Writer

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NEF File in Photoshop

My Nikon D50 is a great camera. It creates pictures in its native RAW format called NEF files. It will also capture a JPEG of the same picture at the same time. How many file formats do you want to archive? JPEGS are fine for the web, but if you want to print the file, the NEF file has higher quality. The NEF file has 100% of the luminance information captured by the camera and is an uncompressed image. The Nikon comes with Picture Project software that is limited in areas of image manipulation. Fortunately, Adobe Photoshop will allow you to use NEF files.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or later running on a MAC or PC.
A NEF file.

Step 1

Select the NEF file.

Open Photoshop and select the FILE/OPEN command to select the NEF file. Notice the file is horizontal and you can see a preview of the file. You can also see a preview of the file in WINDOWS EXPLORER, but windows will not open the file in its picture previewer.
Step 2

Rotate the Image

The first thing we need to do is to rotate the image. Click the LEFT ROTATE button and the image will be rotated 90 degrees. The TRIANGLE buttons allow you to zoom in to the image view to see the detail.
Step 3

Exposure Sliders

We can now make exposure adjustments if we want to. This picture seems a little dark so we will adjust the sliders to lighten the image.
Step 4

Exposure correction

You will see the image change in the window as you move the sliders. Remember you can make these sorts of adjustments in Photoshop so it is not necessary to make a change.
Step 5

White Balance

You can also change the white point. This will change the overall appearance of the image. We selected Direct Sunlight for this picture. Notice the subtle change. Again, it is not necessary to change this since changes can be made within Photoshop. When you are done, click OK.
Step 6

Image in Photoshop

Your image is now open in Photoshop and ready for editing. If you save the image your changes will be made to the NEF file. Change the file name or save as a different format to keep the original intact.

Comments

imagery said

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on 5/6/2008 That is interesting. I don't have "CS" but will try to download a demo to test this out. Maybe Nikon limited NEF support to only their full featured version. As a work around, you can open the file in Picture Project which came with your Nikon Camera, save it as a TIFF (uncompressed) and open the TIFF in Photoshop.

robertjaybass said

on 5/5/2008 Mine says, "Could not complete your request because it is not a valid Photoshop document."
I use CS2.
What can I do?

JaK-5quat said

on 12/17/2007 A bit of misinformation here. A RAW file (NEF - Nikon Electronic Format) has no higher resolution than the highest resolution JPEG a particular camera is capable of producing. There are two differences, and only two, between a RAW file and a JPEG file.

1) The RAW file has 100% of the luminance information captured by the camera, and none of the camera-software settings applied, where as a JPEG has been written on the fly from that same data, but having those settings such as White Balnace and toning (vivid, etc). Make note that after the camera applies those settings, up to 80% of the luminance information is discarded, leaving your post-capture editing capabilities severely limited in terms of color correction etc.

2) A JPEG is compressed in a "lossy" manner, meaning that the file size reduction comes at the price of quality.

2000 X 3000 pixels RAW or JPEG is still 6 million p