Photoshop CS vs. Nikon D40 RAW (.nef)

BL
Posted By
Brianna_Lombardo
Jan 27, 2009
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561
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4
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Hi there,

I can’t open my RAW photos with Photoshop CS 1. I have a iBook G4, running on OS 10.3.9.

I have a Nikon D40, and my photos are in .nef format.

Thanks,

Brianna.
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R
Ram
Jan 27, 2009
Brianna,

First of all, you should be posting in the Adobe Camera Raw forum. Only ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) can open files, not Photoshop itself.

Adobe Bridge Macintosh forum [CLICK HERE] <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bba3d51>

Adobe Camera Raw Forum [CLICK HERE] <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.3bb6a869>

Second, you will never be able to open your NEF files from a D40 directly in CS1, ever. The latest ACR version that runs in CS is ACR 2.4. The earliest version to support the D40 was ACR 3.7, which does not run in CS.

You have two options:

1.– Download the free, stand-alone Adobe DNG Converter 5.2 application and convert your NEF files to DNGs first. You can then open the raw DNGs in ACR 2.4 hosted by CS. ACR 2.4 was the first version to support DNG files.

…or…

2.– Upgrade to CS4 and ACR 5.2 while you still can. Once CS5 is announced sometime early next year, CS won’t qualify for any upgrade any more. (You’ll need a new machine, or at least a new OS, though.)
AW
Allen_Wicks
Jan 27, 2009
Brianna-

Actually this is a good place to start, or better still probably the Photography forum at <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bb41392>.

The ACR Forum logically is ACR-centric and like Ramón suggests has good info on using Adobe ACR to convert your RAW images. However there are many other solutions for converting Nikon NEF photos. Many pros find that Nikon CaptureNX2, Capture One or Apple’s Aperture provide visually superior NEF conversion to Adobe’s ACR. Individual cameras and individual preferences do vary.

Unfortunately with a G4 iBook the limited hardware power is a significant limiting issue. And OS 10.3.x excludes almost everything that will drive RAW conversions from a modern camera like the D40. Probably you are forced into an (IMO inferior) ACR2.4/DNG RAW conversion like Ramón suggests, or for likely far better RAW conversion quality you can investigate using Nikon ViewNX, which I believe came free with your D40 or can be downloaded from Nikon, and alleges to run OK under OS 10.3.9.

IMO Nikon’s software is a bit clunky, but only Nikon has full unimpeded access to the RAW data of Nikon cameras, so you will probably like the resultant RAW conversions of ViewNX if it runs adequately on your setup. Do a trial.

These suggestions are in addition to not in lieu of Ramón’s ACR suggestions, so try them too.

Good luck!
AW
Allen_Wicks
Jan 27, 2009
When you get to deciding to upgrade your computer hardware come here or to the Photography forum and we can discuss that too.
AW
Allen_Wicks
Jan 27, 2009
Another conversion choice (requires OS 10.4 or above) is Raw Photo Processor (RPP).

<http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html>

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