Raw editing Software

Nooga678 · Posted: Jan 02, 2008 10:40 am Post subject: Raw editing Software

I got a Nikon D40 for Xmass. Do the latest versions of Photoshop allow me to edit Raw photos, or will I have to buy the Nikon software? Does the Nikon software work as a plugin for photoshop or as a stand alone photo.

I am new to digital photography and I am fairly new to photoshop. I have used other graphic software, but I am self teaching myself photoshop. I would rather just do all the editing in one software.

I will have many other millions of questions regarding digital photography and editing the pictures.

Thanks in advance.

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 02, 2008 12:05 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure if acr will convert the files from your d40x. The Adobe website should have that info though. I pretty sure that the nikon software is standalone.
For me I shoot canon and find that the canon software does the best job. The interface isn't as nice as some others but the colors are the best of the the ones I tried

Dragonlady8 · Black Widow Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 9198

C3 allows you to edit and open jpg to RAW format

Nooga678 · Posted: Jan 03, 2008 4:49 am Post subject:

Dragonlady8, Does it convert them to DNG or edit them as "NEF" files? I think I misread the adobe website.

Dragonlady8 · Black Widow Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 9198

scott a · Ladies Man Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 9810

Photoshop will edit them as a RAW (NEF) file. Once you import it and start working with it you should be able to save it as a DNG file, though.

Note that you will need ACR 4.1 for the Adobe products to recognize the D40x files, though.

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 03, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject:

Nooga678 · Posted: Jan 04, 2008 4:37 am Post subject:

Thanks for the info. I have Photoshop 6 and I am looking for the cheapest way to be able to edit my NEF files. My investigation revealed that there is no RAW converter for 6.0, so let me know if that is wrong. I guess I need to upgrade to CS3.

Dragonlady8 · Black Widow Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 9198

RUSSIAN, I thought by the "latest version" he meant CS3. Embarassed

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 04, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject:

Dragonlady8, what I mean is I think he wants to edit his nef(raw) files into jpegs(or dng, tiff, etc)

Nooga678, Yeah you'll need to update PS or look into something else. A good, cheaper alternative is Adobe lightroom. Great program that alot of people are raving about.
Like I said though, sometimes the software designed for your camera is the best converter

scott a · Ladies Man Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 9810

Lightroom is the sh*t. It's just absolutely amazing.

...in case anyone out there is wondering! Laughing

Zach M · Posted: Jan 07, 2008 10:11 am Post subject:

Nooga678 · Posted: Jan 07, 2008 11:35 am Post subject:

does lightroom have functions that CS3 does not have, or is it just a lighter cheaper version of CS3 with just the photo editing parts (similar to Elements)?

scott a · Ladies Man Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 9810

Lightroom is more of a databasing and archiving program, but it's got the same Adobe Camera Raw processing as Photoshop does. So basically editing a RAW or JPEG works the same in PS as it does in Lightroom. The only real difference is that you have to export the image from Lightroom and open it in Photoshop if you wanna make a sequence, or use any add-ons or filters that you might have in Photoshop. One thing I really like is that I can open the program and in less than 15 seconds I can find pretty much any image that I've ever taken. So if you take a lot of pictures or you think that you're going to wanna be able to access your photos quickly and easily, then I'd look into Lightroom. But note that Lightroom isn't meant to replace Photshop at all. It's meant to work alongside it.

That said, I also hardly ever use Photoshop. The only thing I've been using it for lately is to make sure the images that I save for web use are below 150K before I save them. Photoshop just makes it easier to do this. But it can still be done in Lightroom.

The Adobe website should have a 30 day free trial of the program...