Up until this weekend I had been using Adobe’s Camera Raw conversion to take my Nikon NEF files and bring them into Photoshop CS2. No more! After doing some experimenting I discovered that the Nikon Raw plugin for Photoshop does a much better job of getting the colors right. It takes a bit longer but it’s worth it.

Here’s all you need to do. First, install Nikon View. Then take the “Nikon NEF Plugin” found in one of the sub-folders and drop it into the “File Formats” folder under “Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins”. The first time you open a RAW file you’ll get a warning about having replaced Adobe Camera RAW, so simply select “don’t warn me again” and you’re set. All you need to do to convert back to Adobe Camera Raw is to remove the Nikon NEF Plugin from the File Formats folder.

There is one downside, however. The Nikon NEF Plugin strips all metadata from the file when opening it. (Adobe’s Camera Raw kept everything intact). Deep sigh.

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