RAW, .nef viewing and editing in Photoshop CS2

[Loren B P]

I am rather new to the world of digital photography, so what I have to say here may be obvious to most of the readers of this forum, but; for the new people like me, it may save someone some grief.

I bought my new D70s and a copy of Photoshop CS2 and thought that I was ready for anything. WRONG! I had my copy of PictureProject loaded on the computer and a trial version Nikon Capture. Upps! Found out that you must load your Photoshop BEFORE you load the Nikon software. Even after uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling I was unable to load RAW file into Photoshop! It also bugged me that raw images were not viewable with the standard Windows viewing software.

To fix the later problem, I found a Windows XP power tool that will allow the viewing of RAW images and it will pass the file to Photoshop. The tool can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D48E808E-B10D-4CE4-A141-5866FD4A3286&displaylang=en This still didn’t let me open a RAW file by Photoshop without first going through an intermediary software package like the power tool viewer or Nikon Capture; the file type plugin for RAW files that shipped with CS2 just didn’t work. Well, Adobe software has new Camera Raw plugin version 3.1 that fixes this problem. I found it at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2931

Hope this saves someone the time and grief I went through to get things working smoothly.

Oh yeah, just in case anyone wants to know, I am still in absolute awe of the D70s. I just bought that silly little remote unit to work the shutter and will be using it when I shoot fireworks tomorrow night. My plans at the moment are to use my 70-300 lens set about 150-200 with F22 and 1.5 to 2 Sec. exposures with an ISO of 200. Well time will tell if I am successful or just blowing smoke. (That latter was my feeble attempt at humor. I’m a Pyrotechnic and a computer guy so that’s about as good as it gets.)

[Jamal]

very helpful, thanks a bunch!

[jonnet00]

What a bunch of whewy I also got the D-70 and CS2 what a bummer. Thanks for the tip I now use Aperture on a G5 only have a fewer less problems, still no real fix for viewing NEF’s

[Esoterra]

To take things 1 step further with your D70s and CS2, here is my RAW Workflow, which allows me to go through and edit 700 pictures in about 30 minutes. Hope this helps

RAW Workflow

1. Load images into Bridge (I do this overnight).
2. Set Bridge to flimstrip view for ease of viewing, and largest files possible (easier to check sharpness this way)
3. Scroll through files, red tagging keepers (Ctrl 6).
4. Go to Filtered (upper right hand corner)- and select "Show Red Label"
5. Batch correct color and exposure for these files.
6. While color correcting, 5 star images to be processed to B&W.
7. Go to Filtered- select "Show 5 stars"
8. Select all 5 starred images. Go to Tools, Photoshop, Image Processor.
9. Photoshop dialog box will open. Create folder for JPEGs. At bottom of page, click box to run action while batching. Select B&W action to use for batch process (I use a Kubota action)
10. Go do something else while images batch, or hang out!
11. Go to Filtered- Select "Show Unrated Items Only."
12. Select all unrated images. Go to Tools, Photoshop, Image Processor.
13. Photoshop dialog box will open. Select another action for batch process (soft light ect).
14. Go hang out for a little longer while these process...

[jcon]

.....which allows me to go through and edit 700 pictures in about 30 minutes.


:eek: I wish I could do mine that quickly. I use Capture NX for 90% of my editing and a full wedding shoot takes me about 3 days to finish editing:o

I do have CS2 but rarely use it now that NX is out.

[wh0128]

I had this problem with opening up Raw images in cs2 because my version just didn't have the recent update for the Camera Raw plug-in.

One question though: Whenever I upload my RAW images from my memory card, I cannot view them while in Windows XP in My pictures with View set at Thumbnail, and so I have to open up each image in CS2 to see what that photo looks like. Is there any update that lets Windows XP show the NEF image in the thumbnail view? THanks for the help.

This thread will be nice for poeple that don't check adobe for updates.