Converting .NEF to .RAW ?

[TCampbell]

Many camera maker Raw files are proprietary. The only open source Raw file type is DNG. Digital Negative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some camera makers use DNG as their Raw file type. Nikon and Canon Raw file types are proprietary.
Adobe has to reverse engineer the proprietary Raw file type that each new model of camera has. The camera makers do not help Adobe do that.

Unlike TIFF, JPEG, several other image formats, RAW is more of a "concept" than a "file format". RAW says that the camera won't do anything to the image which results in a loss of original data. Compression is allowed as long as it's a non-lossy compression.

.CR2 files aren't just different than Nikon .NEF files... each specific camera model actually can have a different file format. There are actually LOTS of ".CR2" formats and updates are released all the time. Next year, Canon and Nikon will likely release some new camera that "this year's" software won't be able to read until the software is updated.

 

[Derrel]

So no one is forced, extorted, leveraged, what ever word you want to use, to buy updated versions of Photoshop.

Few software makers continue supporting and updating software after an upgrade becomes available.

Back in the day (mid 1920's) General Motors borrowed the concept of "planned obsolescence" from the bicycle industry. GM instituted annual model-year design changes to convince car owners that they needed to buy a new car every year. Ford didn't do the same. And it worked as GM hoped - GM sold more cars than Ford for the first time in 1931.

Utter nonsense. Adobe determines that certain camera releases mark, "The end of the line," for millions of customers who use anything EXCEPT the very-newest versions of their software.

And a little tip, when you try to prove a point, try not to provide an example that utterly DIS-proves your point. Your little "planned obsolescence" example only proves my point; namely, that Adobe has forced,leveraged,extorted its users to continually update software in a deliberate, planned way that benefits only Adobe, and not their customers. Your point about General Motors using "planned obsolesence" is EXACTLY what Adobe has done for years now...simply forced users to buy newer and newer versions of software that users had ALREADY bought. It's hard to understand why you continually rush to defend Adobe's predatory practices on this forum,time after time, and fail to see what the rest of ther world knows is true...

 

[mipo]

Many camera maker Raw files are proprietary. The only open source Raw file type is DNG. Digital Negative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some camera makers use DNG as their Raw file type. Nikon and Canon Raw file types are proprietary.
Adobe has to reverse engineer the proprietary Raw file type that each new model of camera has. The camera makers do not help Adobe do that.

Adobe provides a free DNG converter that allows anyone to convert a proprietary raw file type to DNG. Adobe - Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter : For Windows
So no one is forced, extorted, leveraged, what ever word you want to use, to buy updated versions of Photoshop.

Few software makers continue supporting and updating software after an upgrade becomes available.

Back in the day (mid 1920's) General Motors borrowed the concept of "planned obsolescence" from the bicycle industry. GM instituted annual model-year design changes to convince car owners that they needed to buy a new car every year. Ford didn't do the same. And it worked as GM hoped - GM sold more cars than Ford for the first time in 1931.

An intersting feature of DNG is that it has "Early Corruption Warning", it test for corruption before converting and will warn.
It also has a DNG Hash built in the result file and it validates that the image data has not changed since the DNG file was created.
(Reference from "Adobe Lightroom 5 Missing FAQ" book from Victoria Bampton.
This feature is what convince me to convert to DNG.