Hi guys, quick question embarrassing but bear with me. I have not shot in RAW shock horro "blush". so decided time was right and took two trial shots then tried to look at them in CS5 I have a D7100. Anyway long story short. it didn't have that camera loaded . So downloaded DNG converter. my 24.1 file size in NEF ended up 19.1 in DNG. So guys should I just buy Lightroom and be done with it. The monthly cloud PS etc is not option as the Rand is so low against the dollar etc.
advice greatly appreciated.. I know there are some awesome techie folk out there.. HELP please.
Or you could try to find a copy of CS6....there are still some around, but could be difficult to get. Or you could use the software that came with the 7100 and do basic editing and then save in a format recognized by CS5. Just suggestions....my husband has a 3200....we ended up going the CC way as he was still having difficulty with NEF in Lightroom alone.
The image quality is identical between raw files from your camera and converted DNG files. DNG files take up less space on the disk because a lot of non-image data is not retained when converting a raw file to a DNG file. Raw files contain various proprietary camera-specific information such as picture styles, dust delete data, and so on, which Nikon's own software can read and use, but Adobe's software cannot. Therefore, when you convert to a DNG, that useless (to Adobe) information is discarded.
The only benefits in upgrading to a newer version of Photoshop or buying Lightroom is the convenience of not having to manually convert all your files to DNGs before you can open them, and the new processing functions and quality tweaks that have been added in the newer software versions (which are nice, but certainly not essential for most people).
@abirkill thanks Alexis for explaining so well. I was considering getting Lightroom as its good for managing and organising files/pics. So may go that route just to shorten the process. :-)
@suelaubscher No problem! Lightroom is great for organisation, and the new version will also give you access to the newest version of Adobe's raw processing engine (slightly better image quality, slightly better noise reduction, etc.), as well as neat new features like automatic perspective correction. (And remove the tedious step of converting all your files to DNGs!)
Note that if you try and send a file from the latest versions of Lightroom to CS5, for more indepth editing, you'll get a confusing message, because Lightroom 5 tries to send the raw file and the changes in a newer format than CS5 can understand:
The correct option to choose here is the 'Render using Lightroom' option, which will cause Lightroom to process the file before sending it to Photoshop in a format it can understand.
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The only benefits in upgrading to a newer version of Photoshop or buying Lightroom is the convenience of not having to manually convert all your files to DNGs before you can open them, and the new processing functions and quality tweaks that have been added in the newer software versions (which are nice, but certainly not essential for most people).
Note that if you try and send a file from the latest versions of Lightroom to CS5, for more indepth editing, you'll get a confusing message, because Lightroom 5 tries to send the raw file and the changes in a newer format than CS5 can understand:
The correct option to choose here is the 'Render using Lightroom' option, which will cause Lightroom to process the file before sending it to Photoshop in a format it can understand.