NX2 making changes permanent

<p>I've searched everywhere for the answer to this one - it's something that in my many years of photography I've never needed to do before, and I'm blowed if I can find out how !<br>

I use Capture NX2, and of course the normal process is that all changes made to a nef image are non-destructive and can be reversed at a later date. Usually that's perfect, but on this one occasion I want to make those changes permanent (please don't ask why as it's complicated !).<br>

I cannot find any way to do this in NX2 other than filing the edited image as a jpeg, but I want to leave it as a nef if at all possible.<br>

Assistance please...........</p>

<p>I doubt you can do this with Capture NX2. The silly simple workaround would be to make the file Read-Only in the operating system. This will not prevent further editing forever, nor is it completely tamper-proof, but it will guard against 'casual mistakes'.<br>

Otherwise, indeed a TIFF or JPEG....</p>

<p>OK, there is a silly detour method coming to mind: you can export a TIFF, open it again in CNX2, and save that (finished) TIFF as a NEF file again.... but you would no longer see the editing steps you took. I doubt it's what you're looking for?</p>

<p>Nope. </p>

<p>Either save it as a jpg or tiff to 'bake' in the changes. Otherwise, it's just a list of changes that are applied to the raw sensor data.</p>

<p>With the changes in place, click on 'versions', > new version > name it >and immediately save. You can subsequently open the file, click on versions again and choose original. The original can the be altered completly different than the named version, and another version can be created and saved and remains a part of the nef. This may or may not be the answer you are looking for, (any version can be deleted or altered) but just want to make sure you are aware of this option.</p>

<p>Versions doesn't really cover what I want - I understand that however many version you create, they are all actually just 'snapshots' of the edit status at the time and all live in the same file.<br>

Thanks for the thought though..</p>

<p>I am not too sure about nef files but they sound like raw files which, from what I can remember, cannot be changed or created outside a camera. I am sure, however, there are programs that can take an edited raw file and recreate a file that looks (re-engineer) like a raw (nef) file, but I don't know of any.</p>

<p>Without knowing more about your goal, it's likely the closest you can get is to convert the NEF to DNG, and embed the NEF and desired full resolution JPEG preview. You can do this in Lightroom, Adobe DNG Converter, etc. That way any photo viewing software that can view DNG previews will see the desired edited version, which can usually be toggled on or off as desired in some viewers. But neither the original raw file (NEF) or DNG is actually permanently altered - only the embedded JPEG preview.</p>

<p>And with Lightroom you can create a preset containing all of the edits and send that along with the raw file, if the goal is to let someone else have both the raw file and your preferred edits.</p>

<p>By the way, Irfanview does contain a save-to-RAW option, but it doesn't seem to do anything useful. It won't convert an edited DNG or JPEG, for example, into a camera raw file that contains the edited version yet still retains the original camera raw (in this case, NEF). I haven't experimented with it enough to know whether it can do anything useful.</p>

<p>And for what it's worth, while Nikon's Coolscan scanners could save scans as NEFs, those NEFs could not be opened and edited the same way as camera NEFs. <a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00InrH">See this 2006 thread for info</a>.</p>

Save first as NEF. Then save a second version as TIF. The first version will have all the editing steps. The second is pretty baked in.