Nikon NEF vs. Jpeg

[daniel_ding]

I am new to digital camera and recently bought a D70. I have a

question regarding Nikon NEF files. According to Nikon manual, NEF

has highest resolution of all. However,I realize that most people

download picture files from camera to Nikon Capture and do some

initial editting. Then you basically have to save them in Jpeg or

Tiff files in order to use in photoshop(only photoshop CS can

recognize NEF files). My question is that since you will eventually

use jpeg file, why bother to shoot NEF in first place? NEF file is

tipically over 5M while jpeg is much smaller. Therefore, why not

just set the camera at Jpeg fine mode?

 

Also, Nikon Capture 4.01 is very slow to process NEF files. I don't

understand the point of shooting NEF then process it in Jpeg form.

 

Daniel

[peter k]

Daniel, I have a Canon S-40 P&S digital. I shoot in large JPEG fine 100% of the time. The Canon software has the RAW format option which may be similar to Nikon NEF (don't know for sure). After working in photoshop I save all pictures that are to be printed as Tif files. Regards

Peter

[klix]

<i>My question is that since you will eventually use jpeg file...</i>

<p><p>

Says who?? If you have s/w that can read/process NEF, then you can work on a NEF file and save it formats other than jpeg.

<p><p>

If you do not have photoshop CS or Nikon Capture or some s/w that will read NEF, then okay, you have to shoot in a format that you can process.

[ilkka_nissila]

First, the NEF format has more bits per pixel which means that if you make any adjustment to the levels in an image editor, you get a higher quality result from the NEF file. The histogram of an image has gaps after adjustments in 8-bit mode (loss of tones).

 

After the adjustments, I generally save the file as a 16-bit TIFF which means that further adjustments are possible if necessary without significant quality loss. The only thing that is lost in the conversion from NEF to TIFF is the ability to select the color balance. Actually, that ability is not really lost but it has to be done in the image editor instead of the RAW conversion software which has built-in adjustments for different light sources.

 

JPEGs are small because they involve loss of fine detail in the image. You can also expect lots of moire artifacts in texture if you use the D70's built-in JPEG feature.

 

JPEGs are meant for network traffic and such things. In my opinion it's a last resort which is used only when necessary. A JPEG file is only an output stage, modifying a JPEG file and saving it as JPEG again results in incremental image quality deterioration.

[beno_t_marchal]

<p>There are a number of reasons to like NEF better and some not to like it so much.

<p>The arguments in favour of NEF boil down to this: you can make the most destructive

corrections (color, contrast and exposure) working with the 12 bits of data that the camera

captured.

<p>By the time you load the image it's already pretty good and its histogram is still in

great shape. If you plan even more corrections, you can also load a 16 bits image, again

giving you more options to make corrections.

<p>I shoot almost exclusively NEF so I'm not sure why people like JPEG but the two

arguments I hear most often against NEF

are (1) that they are larger so you need more storage and (2) that they take more time to

process.

<p>I agree with the first argument but I consider storage to be cheap enough that this is

not a concern for me. I do shoot JPEG occasionally when I know my cards will fill up too

fast or when I need long bursts (the buffer fills in less quickly with JPEG).

<p>I mostly disagree with the second argument. I have found that, with the right

workflow and Photoshop CS, NEF is actually faster than JPEG... precisely because it is so

easy to implement those corrections. But I can see that point that if you don't plan to use

Photoshop at all or you don't want to learn/invest in RAW workflow, than JPEG is faster.

<p>--ben<br><a href="http://www.marchal.com">marchal.com</a>

[ilkka_nissila]

Also one does not need Photoshop CS or Nikon Capture to read NEF files. The Nikon View that comes with the camera is sufficient.

[stan_strembicki]

I only use jpeg's for WWW uploads. For all my printing uses, I only use TIFF's

converted from the original NEF files. I also re-sample up using Photoshop

CS, and I am sure the re-sampling works better with 16 bit TIFFs, there is just

more information there to work with.

 

The critcal thing for you to remember is that with JPEG format, everytime you

open and close the file, you loose a little bit of information during

compression.

 

I know of no serious digital photographer, who prints their work, who shoot in

the JPEG format. Its an easy format to learn in, and does open quickly and is

easy to store, all thats correct, but there is a lot less pixel depth in JPEG.

[dan_mcs]

I can name one Michele Celentano and she has a web page www.michelecelentano.com . she is also in the nov/dec 2004 digital photo pro.

[ShunCheung]

It is not a good idea to make absolute statements such as nobody does something or you are 100% sure, etc. Some wise guy is going to come up with one or two exceptions to disprove your statement.

 

To make a long story short, JPEG compresses the information and is great for web display or e-mail. However, in most cases it is unwise to permanently throw away information at the time you press the shutter release. In case you need the additional info later on, it cannot be recovered. In these days memory and disk space is cheap. That is why most of us shoot RAW/NEF most of the time.

[cappoldt]

Stan, correct me if I'm wrong - but you don't lose data when opening and closing a jpeg file. You only run the risk of loss when again SAVING the file, as this is when the compression is done. When you merely open and close it, the file remains unchanged.

[aardvarko]

<i>I know of no serious digital photographer, who prints their work, who shoot in the JPEG format.</i><br><br>Right - Magnum, VII, Getty, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, they're not serious at all... buncha hacks.

[bill_harris1]

I made the mistake of shooting a bunch of pictures in NEF...I do not print my own for the most part...The lab I take my work to could not open a NEF file...I converted them to PSD..NEF files run around 34/35 MGs..PSD around 3/4 MGs..Nothing lost as far as I can tell..

[ilkka_nissila]

Lots of labs take jpegs as input but it is a completely another matter whether something should be shot as a jpeg original. If you convert the NEF into TIFF and, adjust the image, and only then save it as a JPEG for printing, you'll get a higher quality result than if you had originally used the (generally poor) JPEG algorithms in the camera.

 

D70 NEF files are 5-6 MB, so while they provide much superior moire elimination and somewhat superior fine detail, they are only a little bit larger than the best JPEGs, which are still quite a bit worse than the NEFs in fine aspects.

[gaius1]

There is no one answer - it ENTIRELY depends on your workflow.

 

Photojournalists need speed above all, and their images are reproduced in newspapers and on websites. They expect to get a "good enough" image straight out of the camera for this purpose (why do you think Sports Illustrated's team takes 12,000 shots at a football game? So they get dozen or so that they'll actually use). So what if you can't make a fine art print from it, it's better to have a limited-quality image of a unique instant in time than to have a beautiful image of a second afterwards. These people shoot JPEG for speed of capture, card capacity, and the ability to drop data straight out of the camera and into publishing workflow systems.

 

If, however, you expect to finesse the image, to work on each frame individually in multiple editing sessions, and to produce a fine print, then you need to best possible image out of the camera, and you need it not to degrade as you gradually work on it. That means a lossless format. Capture NEF, tune it in C1, create a TIFF, edit it in Photoshop, then when you are finally ready to print, make a JPEG (obviously keeping the TIFF for the future) at the best possible quality and send it to the Frontier lab for printing.

 

The format there really is no point to is uncompressed TIFF in the camera. If anyone does have a use for it, I'd be curious to know what it is.

[ilkka_nissila]

TIFFs (which are unavailable as camera output from the D70) allow you to open the file with any program, involve no JPEG compression so they are a versatile choice but take up a lot of memory card space.

[ShunCheung]

It is almost never a good idea to shoot with TIFF. The files take up too much memory card space and are slow to write, while it provides no more information than RAW. It should surprise no one that the TIFF option is no longer available on the newer DSLRs.

 

Speed is key for news and sports type photograhers. Literally in a matter of minutes, images need to appear on news web sites such as CNN, New York Times, etc. Wireless tranmission of small JPEG files is the only way to go with current technology. That is why the RAW + JPEG option is now available on the D2H, Canon 1D2, D70 .... You get the JPEG file for immediately display while there is the RAW file for subsequent fine tuning.

[daniel_ding]

Thank you all for your answers. I think I finally got the point. While Nikon NEF provides fineset quality of image capture based on today's technology, it is more common for photo labs to use JPEG for prints. That's why some of digital tutorials teaching people to shoot NEF, edit and save on high quality JPEG. My understanding from all the answers above, for quality image restoration and storage, TIFF is the best way to go, or isn't it?

[ShunCheung]

Yes, TIFF is probably the most common way to save your master copies. If you edit with PhotoShop, the PhotoShop-specific PSD format is also common. These formats let you preserve the layers created during editing.

 

The fact that some labs cannot process Nikon's RAW NEF format should not be an issue. Most digital shots require some kind of re-touching one way or another. Therefore, after editing, you save them into TIFF or high-quality JPEG and then send them to the lab. At least you can do a batch conversion into TIFF or JPEG.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Whether it is a NEF format image fil or a large/fine JPEG compressed format image file, the

resolution is still 2000 x 3008, so there is no gain in "resolution". Both files, when opened

are the same size. What you gain by using the JPEG format is storage space, either on the

flash card/micro drive or on your hard disk.

 

What you lose by using the JPEG format might be, depending on what your intent is, what

the subject is, and how the images will be used, substantial: an ability to manipulate

dynamic range; an ability to tweak or massively change color rendition (white balance)

without damaging the original data. An ability to change the overall exposure of the

opened & processed image; the ability to change color space setting (example: the larger

Adobe RGB to the green/blue truncated sRGB colorspace), the ability to change any

sharpening setting settings you set in camera. And since JPEGS only record color at a

depth of 8 bits per color channel (there are 3 color channels Red, Green & Blue in a digital

image) you lose 3840 gradations of color per channel. 8 bits = 256 gradations or "steps",

9 bits = 512 steps, etc. So you see that each additional bit per channel doubles the

previous bits number per step and the D70 like all DSLR cameras on the market today uses

a chip that records up to 12 bits per channel.

 

NEF is what is known as a "raw" format: data recorded by each photosite (AKA ?pixel?) in

the sensor when you make the image is not processed in any way by the camera. But if

circumstances are variable or uncertain, or if you don't know how the image might be used

or reproduced (AKA "targeted"), or if you just like to go in and tinker with the image, then

shooting a "raw? format (like NEF) is a better option. In short: using the NEF format is all

about getting more control over your image. This shifts a lot of the responsibility over to

the photographer.

 

But when you use the JPEG format -- or TIF if your camera is capable of recording in that

format -- the camera processes the file and assigns colorspace; locks in white balance;

sharpening settings, "tone" modifications; & contrast. If you are a news or sports

photographer: uses where speed of getting the image published is a primary

consideration,

or know exactly how the image is going to be used or printed and have a perfect color

rendition, using JPEG isn't a bad thing. In fact it is very useful.

 

Back to 12 bits vs. 8 bits per channel file size: Virtually all photo output these days --

whether to the internet, to an inkjet printer, or to a commercial photo printer is limited to

8 bits. The extra data is often called ?editing headroom?. This headroom is very important

when you start doing any kind of editing on the image file in either Photoshop or another

"digital darkroom program as every editing step to one degree or another. When you work

with high bit depth images the goal is to get those 4096 gradations down to the "perfect"

8 bits for that device. This is part of what is known as targeting to output. Targeting is the

process of optimizing the file to get the best possible results out of a specific output

device or method. If you are a casual photographer this may not matter to you, and once

again using the JPEG format is useful.

 

The final value of using NEF or any raw format is that is essentially a digital negative.

Archive the NEF file and you can come back to it at another time and re process it for how

you will use it in a different way or do a better job of processing it as you improve your

digital darkroom skills.

[Philip Freedman]

Having for some years scanned slides into TIFF format using VueScan and a Minolta slide scanner, and printing out via Photoshop, I am now using digital cameras of 5 to 6 meg and I started taking JPEGs which are fine for retouching in Photoshop and printing up to at least 8x10 or more. My problem is that I would like to use a higher quality but the family like me to hand out 6x4 snapshots as quickly as possible so I need to be able to have a shop download JPEGs from the SD card. If I take photographs in a mode that simultaneously saves in both RAW (NEF in Nikon) and JPEG, will that allow both the over-the-counter printing of 6x4s and also my working a quality basis on selected shots in Photoshop? Or does it have deficiencies?

[raymond_rippel]

A question for the group: what is the least expensive, reasonably powerful PC software available to manipulate, print and export (as .jpg) .nef files?

[avinash1]

$0 :-)

 

I use Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) and the UFRaw (http://www.aei.mpg.de/~udif/ufraw/) plugin under Linux and everything works well.

 

I can open, adjust white balance, change saturation and adjust exposure compesation in the plugin. All other editing (like cropping) can then be done in Gimp.

 

I believe that both Gimp and UFRaw work also in Windows.

[w._reid_grimes]

PhotoShop Elements 2 (after loading the Nikon Capture trial) will read and process D70 NEF files. I am awainting PS Elements 3 ($65 from Amazon) which reads NEF files.

Reid