How to Open NEF Files in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0

Nikon camera owners love their cameras and the high resolution NEF format. However, not all image editing programs have the capability of handling this proprietary format. Essentially, an NEF file is a high resolution, uncompressed file similar to a RAW file format. Although only RAW files and not NEF files are not listed as an option in Photoshop Elements, you can open NEF files and the new conversion interface makes it easy to compensate for file irregularities before opening. Keep in mind you cannot save as an NEF file with Photoshop Elements. I don’t find this a drawback; in fact, I think it is an advantage. I keep my NEF files as a pristine image backup and process my edited files to JPEG, PNG, TIFF or some other file format. Follow the steps below to open and convert your NEF files to Adobe working formats.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0
• A NEF file

1. 
   Open the Image

   Open Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 and select OPEN from the FILE menu. Locate your NEF file and click OPEN to bring up the conversion screen.

2. 
   File Conversion Screen

   The first thing you will notice is those red blotches in your image. The preview shows you the specular highlights in the image. These are highlights without detail. If these are minor you can correct them by adjusting the exposure. These blotches will not be seen in your final image. It is normal to have some specular highlights in images, especially images with water or metal reflections. Notice there are two tabs of adjustments you can make during the conversion process. This process converts the NEF image to Adobe’s working space. You can later save the image as a TIFF, JPEG or many other image formats.

3. 
   Basic Adjustments

   There are two tabs full of adjustments you can make to your image during the conversion. The BASIC tab allows you to change exposure, saturation, color temperature and fill light. Once you have made your adjustments and like the way the image looks in the preview window, click on the DETAIL tab.

4. 
   Detail Adjustments

   The DETAIL adjustments allow you to change detail, masking, sharpening and luminance of the picture. To make these adjustments make sure you view the image at 100 percent or larger, or you will not notice the changes in the preview

5. 
   Convert Image

   When you are done making the adjustments you can click on OPEN IMAGE to bring up the image in the Photoshop Elements Editor. Before opening the image make sure you check the BIT DEPTH to select the working bit depth you need. It will default to 16 Bits per channel since this is a high resolution image. You may need to change this to 8 Bits per channel to take full advantage of all the Adobe tools. You can also immediately save the file to a PSD file after it is opened.

6. 
   Open Image

   The converted NEF file is opened in the Adobe Photoshop editing window allowing you to make any further changes to the files like cropping, color adjustments or text addition. Once the file has been converted and opened, you can save it as PDF, TIFF, RAW, PNG or JPEG file. The new version of Adobe Photoshop Elements makes it easier than ever to work with NEF files in an inexpensive and powerful image editing environment.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember, you are not making changes to the original NEF file; you are merely converting it for use within the software environment.
• Changing the exposure is similar to adjusting contrast and brightness at the same time.

Resources

• Adobe Photoshop Elements

[heather74]

on 10/5/2009 Photoshop Elements 7.0 has now allows .nef files. They open and can be edited with no problem. You still need to save them in another format after editing (I use .tiff) but you are probably saving as anyway so NBD. I amshotting with a Nikn D90

[Ladybugblue]

on 9/28/2008 You have inspired me to practice my software skills for adobe photoshop. Do you think there is much difference in the 6.0 & the 7.0?

[luv2blog]

on 9/12/2008 Nice.

[imagery]

on 9/9/2008 Nikon also allows you to save images as JPEG and in some cases TIFF. You can also save multiple formats, NEF and JPEG at the same time which is very useful.

[Vanillatte]

on 9/8/2008 Great, detailed information!