what format for long terme?

Bonjour

 

I am using a Nikon D90 and save in Nef format (raw) and jpg (but it is a a lossy format) And we know that rhis nef format can be variable with the time and Nikon

But at long terme i am not sure that the computer will read this actual Nikon raw format

Capture Nx2 read correctly the nef and can convert it for TIF format

Adobe lightroom 2 can read and interpret and export the nef in Psd format

But ,for example in five years ,which of these format are better chance to be read again by computer?? Tif or Psd or other

Thanks

<p>As long as my computer can read my files I'm not concerned what happens in 5 years. Outside of my own work, I can't control what happens anyway.<br /> You can save your nef files in other formats, if that's more comforting for you as you may believe they will out live the Nikon RAW files. <br /> At any rate, just my thoughts and I hope you are not too terribly concerned about what's around 5 years from now. And whatever happens I believe there will be ways to transition from one format to another.</p>

<p>It is easy for software to handle old formats. The code is already written so they have do more work to <strong>not</strong> support old formats by ripping out the old code. Nikon will be around for a long time and is such a major player that your grandchildren are more likely to run into this problem than you. I save my files in the both the original format from the camera and PSD as I edit in Photoshop. Disk storage is cheap nowadays.</p>

<p>Danny</p>

 

<p>Agree with the above responses, but if you're really worried convert to DNG - has the most chance of becoming an archival format. JPEG is fine for final output and doubtful it's going anywhere for many years yet.</p>

<p>There are free/shareware programs like Irfanview and FastStone that can read most graphic file formats, including some that haven't been in common use for many years. I wouldn't worry about my raw files becoming unreadable.</p>

<p>Hard drive space is cheap. I save all my NEFs, and for my selects, I save TIFFs and JPG's.</p>

<p>I agree with Lex. There are several free software packages that read NEF, so the code is available and if everything else fails, you and fellow NEF file owners can hire a programmer to port the code to new systems in the future. Obviously, this is a very, very remote scenario. There are enough NEF files and programs that read them around that Nikon probably couldn't kill the technology if they tried. Once something is on the net, it pretty much does not go away. People still run binaries of games for 8-bit 1980s Atari computers under emulation on new computers.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone for your comments<br>

I think now that the futur of the formats (nef,dng,tif or psd) is assured </p>