NEFs to JPEG

[SRA]

If this has been asked before then please excuse my inability to find it on this site. My question is how to turn a file of NEFs into JPEGs. I had a wonderful date with my wife last night where we went photographing flowers at a beautiful garden nearby. Now I want to turn my NEFs into a screensaver but need the NEFs to be converted.

I hope this is an easy adjustment. If not I will have to start shooting Raw and jpeg which eats up a lot of card space.

Thank you for your advice in advance.

 

[Elf_8]

Scott, I think this is an easy one. You do use a software to view and process your NEFs. Any of them PictureProject, Nikon Capture Editor or PhotoShop) should allow you to "Save as..." using the JPG format. You should then have the choice of size and quality level. I prefer to use the highest quality (12 in PS).
Hope this helps.

 

[greyflash]

Scott, I assume you have Nikon Capture? If so you can "save as" a TIFF or JPEG from this program. Many of us do the initial processing in NC and then save as a TIFF. This TIFF then serves as the vehicle by which we process the images in Photo Shop. After PS processing and resizing we "save as" a JPEG. If you don't have NC, you can open the NEF file in PS/CS and then resize and save as a JPEG.

 

[Robin Roddy]

Slightly Off-topic...

I hope this is an easy adjustment. If not I will have to start shooting Raw and jpeg which eats up a lot of card space.

Technically, this doesn't address your question directly, but it is at least tangentially relevant. I used to shoot RAW+JPG, so that :
a.) I could quickly go through my shots when I got them onto my computer, and make binary keeper/tosser judgements, and,
b.) so that I could view the pictures on other peoples' computers if I wasn't at home.

I discovered a program called Preview Extractor (available at: http://drchung.new21.net/previewextractor/ ), which I put on my memory card (takes up about 2megs, including some .dlls). Basically, if I want .jpgs to go with my .nefs, I run the program, and it extracts the .jpg that already exists within the .nef file to the directory of my choice.

I find it handy because this way .jpgs are not taking up room on my memory card, and I can still view my pictures (or at least the jpg equivalent) at friends' houses, parents' houses, etc., even if they don't have photo software that supports raw.

It also has a neat "Shutter Count" function that tells me how many times my shutter has been pressed.

 

[dew542512]

Scott, I can recommend 2 programs to try if you are looking for the ability to do batch conversions

1) Irfanview - it's free and does a reasonable job of handling NEF -> JPG including the SRGB conversion if required
http://www.irfanview.com/

2) If you have Adobe CS/CS2 try Dr. Browns Image Processor which does the conversion and does the SRGB conversion also
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

In terms of features Irfanview offers more and my personal opinion is that Irfanview is faster but Adobe CS is more accurate. so it's trade off as to what your looking for. If you use Irfanview dont forget to download the plugins or it wont recognize NEF's


hope this helps...

Doug

 

[nburwell]

Scott, I personally use Corel Raw Shooter 2005. It's a trial edition, so it doesn't have all the features if you had purchased the actual program (but it was free, so I can't complain). If you're just looking to convert your NEF files to JPEG, then you can use this program, too.

http://www.corel.com/

 

[jfrancis]

What do you normally use to process your RAW files? If it is PS, it is possible that they are coming into PS as 16-bit files, in which case JPG will not be an option in the "Save As" dialog. You will have to convert to 8-bit first.

 

[SRA]

Thank you, everyone (for the Dickens fans). Your comments focused my brain in the right direction. I figured it out. What I wanted to do, and I worded my earlier question poorly, was to perform these conversions en masse. In other words, to take the entire card's images and convert them to JPEGs for a seperate file of images.

I found that the Nikon Capture software will perform this task. However, I don't know how to accomlish the same 'batch' processing on APCS2 yet.

But again, thank you. Without your thought provoking advice I would still be wandering around the digital woods.

Robin, thank you for the Extractor link. I might give it a try.

Doug, I will look at your programs too. Thanks again.

 

[Chris101]

Hi Scott. PSCS2 does this very well, using an action run in batch mode - I do it all the time. Bruce Fraser's book Real World Camera Raw, goes into all the details. I'm at mty girlfriend's house (babysitting while she's shopping... :roll on my laptop right now, that doesn't have CS2 on it. When I get home this evening, I'll pull that action and post instructions on how to apply it to a large group of files.

 

[SRA]

Hi Scott. PSCS2 does this very well, using an action run in batch mode - I do it all the time. Bruce Fraser's book Real World Camera Raw, goes into all the details. I'm at mty girlfriend's house (babysitting while she's shopping... :roll on my laptop right now, that doesn't have CS2 on it. When I get home this evening, I'll pull that action and post instructions on how to apply it to a large group of files.

Chris,

Thanks very much. I'll check in later tonight for details.

NOW this is a great forum!

 

[Iliah]

Re: Slightly Off-topic...

I discovered a program called Preview Extractor (available at: http://drchung.new21.net/previewextractor/ )

I do similar thing, but with my own program. You can even get EXIFs back embedded with a simple script I think.

 

[Steve S]

Nobody mentioned Nikon View

N view has the ability to convert nefs to jpgs. AND resize them at the same time if you want. I still feel it's best to take a single nef into NC4, make your adjusments, then do a batch conversion based on those adjustements. That's assuming all of the adjustments apply to all of the files in a given folder.