Nikon's Raw Deal

The land of shooting raw is one of those mystical landscapes where software lags behind hardware. New-ish cameras like Nikon's D80 doesn't produce a file easily manipulated with anything but the absolute forward-most edge of Adobe applications. So, what's a girl do to with those glorious digital negative files?

THE PHOTOSHOP ROUTE
CS3 can handle them and after a few hours yesterday with a bad batch of Nikon raw files (the endearing .REFs), I learned that two plug-ins for CS2 will also work.

1. Camera Raw plugin- Generic packet available free from Adobe.com; only works reliably for D50
2. Nikon NEF LE plugin- Automatically installed in your Photoshop utility library when you download the (shitty) Nikon application PictureProject, which just for monopolistic giggles can only be accessed from their website if you have the serial number of a piece of Nikon equipment.

OTHER SOLUTIONS
The latest version of Aperture can supposedly process Nikon Raw, but I received massive and unexplainable waves of error messages. Lightroom can also process them, but this little gem now costs $199.

SO, WHY RAW?
Shooting in raw on your SLR provides the infinite control that photographer's yearn for. No in-camera automated processing means every element cab be tweaked-- this is especially useful for color manipulation. The idea of a digital negative woos shutter bugs, but make sure you've got a sound software setup before you snap irreplaceable, time-sensitive images.

-MFN