Nikon Raw support within PhotoShop CS2 & D200

Will the Nikon D200 ship with a new Raw plugin for Photoshop CS2 or is the
same converter used across Nikon's entire DSLR range(D2X - D70s)?

Hi!

chupa wrote:

Will the Nikon D200 ship with a new Raw plugin for Photoshop CS2 or is the
same converter used across Nikon's entire DSLR range(D2X - D70s)?

I was to a presentation of the D200 by a local dealer here in
Hamburg/Germany yesterday afternoon and i asked the Nikon representive
about that and support of Apples new software 'Aperture' as well. He
told me that the D200 has a completely new developed sensor, different
to other Nikon DSLR cameras, so the 3rd party SW will require a new
plugin or an update, i do not know how 'Aperture' deals with 'NEF'
'under the hood'.

The prochure i got, states that 'PicureProject' comes with the camera,
however this varies depending upon country/region. I do not care for the
Nikon SW, like PS CS2 better and i am interested in 'Aperture', the
presentation by Apple yesterday morning was promising....

This topic is discussed in several forums, so i think Adobe and Apple
are aware of this situation and will take care of it by delivering
upgrade (Apple) or new plugin (Adobe).

Cheers and nice weekend, thomas
--
Thomas Krull [DF1HX] http://www.df1hx.de

Thomas:

I purchased Aperture and have now used it for approximately 10 days.

I am and have always been an Apple die hard fan and old time Mac user so I
feel comfortable as well as embarrassed to share the following advice.

Save your money and avoid Aperture. It is a big waste of money at this
point. Apple has a lot of work to do on this one and its going to take at
least a few upgrades and then the release of another version for it to match
Photoshop, Bridge and Camera Raw.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 12/9/05 8:00 AM, in article , "Thomas
Krull" wrote:

Hi!

chupa wrote:

Will the Nikon D200 ship with a new Raw plugin for Photoshop CS2 or is the
same converter used across Nikon's entire DSLR range(D2X - D70s)?

I was to a presentation of the D200 by a local dealer here in
Hamburg/Germany yesterday afternoon and i asked the Nikon representive
about that and support of Apples new software 'Aperture' as well. He
told me that the D200 has a completely new developed sensor, different
to other Nikon DSLR cameras, so the 3rd party SW will require a new
plugin or an update, i do not know how 'Aperture' deals with 'NEF'
'under the hood'.

The prochure i got, states that 'PicureProject' comes with the camera,
however this varies depending upon country/region. I do not care for the
Nikon SW, like PS CS2 better and i am interested in 'Aperture', the
presentation by Apple yesterday morning was promising....

This topic is discussed in several forums, so i think Adobe and Apple
are aware of this situation and will take care of it by delivering
upgrade (Apple) or new plugin (Adobe).

Cheers and nice weekend, thomas

That bad, eh? How disappointing.

Joseph Chamberlain, DDS wrote:
Thomas:

I purchased Aperture and have now used it for approximately 10 days.

I am and have always been an Apple die hard fan and old time Mac user so I
feel comfortable as well as embarrassed to share the following advice.

Save your money and avoid Aperture. It is a big waste of money at this
point.

That sucks. The review at arstechnica pretty much dismisses it as
worthless right now.

Greg

--
"Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late
The battles we fought were long and hard
Just not to be consumed by rock and roll" - The Mekons

"G.T." wrote in
:

That sucks. The review at arstechnica pretty much dismisses it as
worthless right now.

IMHO, if the RAW conversion engine is as bad as they say, it hardly matter
what other features it's got. Bad results don't make for happy clients.

Hi Joseph and tnx for your comments!

Joseph Chamberlain, DDS wrote:

I purchased Aperture and have now used it for approximately 10 days.

Here in Europe it costs 479 Euro, so about 500 bucks, so already decided
to wait since i want to avoid testing of software with that price tag at
the customer's end.
I am not a 'pro' but 'advanced' amateur...

I am and have always been an Apple die hard fan and old time Mac user so I
feel comfortable as well as embarrassed to share the following advice.

I switched from Linux, never cared for Windows, about 13 months ago and
i am very pleased with my 2x2 G5.

Save your money and avoid Aperture. It is a big waste of money at this
point. Apple has a lot of work to do on this one and its going to take at
least a few upgrades and then the release of another version for it to match
Photoshop, Bridge and Camera Raw.

For the time being i am happy with PS CS2 so no need to rush. However i
was impressed by the technicial aspect of 'Aperture' showed/explained in
the presentation, i like the way that it does not touch the 'master
file' ('NEF'/RAW) but handles the 'versions' (adjusted pictures) by
storing small 'instruction files' only and displaying the 'version(s)'
by using the original 'master' handled by OS X and those instructions.

Cheers, thomas
--
Thomas Krull [DF1HX] http://www.df1hx.de

On 12/9/05 10:19 PM, in article
, "Eric Gill"
wrote:

"G.T." wrote in
:

That sucks. The review at arstechnica pretty much dismisses it as
worthless right now.

IMHO, if the RAW conversion engine is as bad as they say, it hardly matter
what other features it's got. Bad results don't make for happy clients.

Eric:

RAW conversion is only one of its many problems.

It has a proprietary library format and you must import your RAW files into
Aperture's library. Major problem and most photographers don't like the idea
of committing their photos to this file system. Inside Aperture proprietary
library architecture each RAW image file is kept in its own folder with not
1 associated "sidecar" file but actually 4 sidecar files that contain
information associated to the image. However, these sidecar files are not
stored in a open file format standard such as .xmp which is the case with
Adobe Camera Raw but rather in a file format that is text based but doesn't
seem to conform to .xmp and to be something proprietary to Aperture.

Another major issue is that of performance. This is software created by the
same company that designs and manufactures the hardware it is meant to run
on. System specifications exclude everything but the latest and fastest
systems. For one the minimum system requirement calls for a G5 1.8 GHz
processor or faster. This excludes "all" Powerbooks. Since many
photographers working on the field use their notebooks to transfer and view
their photos until they get back to their offices and are able to work on
their desktops, Apple has made a lot of users very angry. Also those who
don't have the latest G5 along with a top notch graphics card can't use
Aperture. This also caused many users to feel left out and prevented from
using this application.

I have both a PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 GHz and a Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz. The
PowerBook is only a 1 1/2 old so I consider it to be new. The PowerMac G5 is
only 1 year old. Aperture runs so slowly on my Powerbook that it simply
isn't realistic to use it. It runs okay on my dual although it is no speed
champion. Interesting enough Photoshop CS2, Bridge and Camera Raw run plenty
fast enough on both my machines and perform very well even on the notebook.
How can this be ? How can software developed by a third party company run
better and faster than that developed by the same company that designed the
hardware it runs on ? Very bad !

I purchased Aperture because of its interface that was so appealing and some
very interesting design features. My intention was to use it as a
replacement for Camera Raw and Bridge as a data asset management tool. After
using it for transferring, selecting, renaming, sorting, processing,
assigning labels and keywords, and other tasks I would then transfer the
images to Photoshop for post processing. I was never fooled into believing
this would be a replacement for Photoshop which has been around for over a
decade and is now in its 10th version. The problem is that Aperture isn't
even good enough to replace Bridge and Camera Raw being used as a data asset
manager.

For now it is pretty much useless. The interface has been superbly designed
and it has some very innovative features any photographer would like to
have. But file management, raw conversion and performance will prevent it
from becoming wide spread. Apple has three choices: redesign and improve,
treat it as a version of iPhoto on steroids targeting the average consumer
or allow the software to die a slow death.

One thing is sure to emerge from this. Adobe is definitely going to feel the
pressure and the competition from this software with really innovative and
quite creative functions and tools. The interface is really brilliant. If
Adobe is in tune with consumers and what they want it will incorporate many
of the brilliant design and interface features of Aperture into Bridge and
develop a killer application for version CS3.

Forget Aperture for now.

Best regards,

Joseph

---

Dr. Joseph Chamberlain
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Eric Gill wrote:

IMHO, if the RAW conversion engine is as bad as they say, it hardly matter
what other features it's got. Bad results don't make for happy clients.

The RAW conversion is pretty darned bad, and the app has other problems as
well. It's a juiced-up iPhoto; it is not by any stretch of the imagination
a "professional" application, nor is it suitable in its current state for
serious amateur photographers.

I'm *really* glad I found myself a "demo" version to try out. It's not
worth paying for. It might be worth paying for if it were $50. And even
then it should probably be a public beta in its current state.

--
Jeremy |

As soon as I receive my D200 [supposedly 17 December] I will be able to
officially comment on this. I know the answer but supposedly am sworn
to secrecy by [deleted].Hopefully, Adobe will soon come out with a fix.
Trouble is my software [CS2] is already hosed, apparently by the damn
Nikon proprietary software of old, so to read the EDIF data while in
CS2, I now have to convert the images to Adobe's DNG non-proprietary
format.

I wish Nikon would grow up and release this proprietary info to Adobe
well ahead of time so Adobe could fix the problem correctly. Most
people, especially advanced amateurs and pros, use CS2 and aren't about
to change. Canon doesn't pull this nonsense, and if I weren't a died in
the wool Nikon user [since 1959 when I bought a Nikon F], I would
switch to Canon.

I advise beginners who are serious about photography to start out with
Canon. Nikon continues to shoot itself in the foot. Pity, as the Nikon
cameras and lenses are superb. Short-sighted idiocy like proprietary
formats [such as the D70S format and apparently the D200 as well] that
force you to use inferior Nikon software are not the way to please your
customers. Yes, in Nikon Capture [$99 worth of trouble] there is a
"button" that sends the image to CS2 [or other versions of Photoshop]
but it is a waste of time and money and screws up workflow and forces
me to pay the $99 until the fix is out by Adobe.

My latest attempt to do it the Nikon way with their software apparently
lost me further CS2 functionality as I can no longer batch convert to
DNG, but must do it one image at a time. Maybe somebody out there will
tell me a way to fix this.

When I get the D200 I will sell my D70 and keep the D70S, because the
D70 doesn't have a real cable release for tripod shots where you want
to stay behind the camera. Of course the D70 format worked perfectly
with CS2. Nikon manages to screw things up one way or the other when it
comes to RAW formats, which I will always use. In my fantasy world
Google will invent Picasa3 and it will have a RAW image adjust function
for all Nikons built in. And, it will be free!!

Tom