What program to convert and edit. What do you like and use?

[TammyCampbell]

What one is the best for you? I've heard gimp,photoshop,paint shop , arcsoft. What do you use and why do you like it? Also when you edit nef an original goes to an archival folder right? Your not destroying the original file right?

 

[Braineack]

Lightroom + plugins (silver efex 2, Portraiture). I only bother with PS anymore when I'm actually trying to manipulate the pixels.

 

[astroNikon]

I use Adobe lightroom v4.3. I'm no where near an expert but it saves your NEF and add your edits. You can always go back to the original I believe.
I'm starting to understand all the editing features and the "workflow". But i've only scraped maybe 5% of it's capabilities.

Alot of people use Photoshop too for more advanced edits.

 

[480sparky]

Capture NX2 and GIMP.

CNX because it's way way way cheaper then PhotoShop, does 95% of what I need, and GIMP, because it's free and does the remaining 5%.

 

[TheLost]

Lightroom.. Try the Demo, Watch some training video's on Youtube and wait for a ~$70 sale.

I own Photoshop but cant remember the last time i used it to edit camera images.

 

[Derrel]

Lightroom, yes. It's pretty easy to use. It does NOT alter your original raw files, so the .NEFs stay unmanipulated. What Lighroom does do however, is it makes a series of commands that tell the application "how to view" the image data. These changes can be saved in the same folder as the .NEFs in the form of .xmp files, which are often referred to as "sidecar files". These are very small instruction sets, around 4k. The other option is to have the changes written to the Lightroom catalog's database.

In Lightroom, you "Import" the images, and it makes preview images from the raw data. Then, you edit and or adjust the images. When you're satisfied, you can select from one image, up to all of the images in that folder, and "Export" the files, to make .JPGs or .TIFFs or whatever, so that you have finished, completed, ready-to-use files that are free-standing and appear the same way in multiple environments.

Lightroom is a simple, affordable, reliable image editing AND cataloging application software program. It is without a doubt, worth every penny it costs.

 

[ShootRaw]

Lightroom 5.2

 

[SCraig]

In order of preference:
Capture NX2 (#1), DxO Optics 9 (#2), Corel PaintShopPro (#3), Corel Aftershot (#4), Adobe PhotoShop (#5). I also have a copy of Lightroom but I uninstalled it.

 

[vimwiz]

GIMP, I keep the originals around (Some SANE format that I think is the scanner equivilent of RAW), as well as hi-res versions (where I have sorted the colour/contrast) and smaller versions of these. Main reason I use GIMP is as my film scanner works better in Linux than it ever did under Windows (which now not at all). Working with large files uses tons of resources though, switched to SSD and bumped the RAM, much better now.

 

[WanderingSol]

I use Irfanview for minor fixes, cropping and rotating, GIMP for more intense stuff. Always work with copies so I can always start over.

 

[Trblmkr]

I use Lightroom 5 for most of my editing, but I don't leave the files in .NEF format. All of mine are converted to DNG's as they are imported from my disc, so that I can use them across multiple computers and not have to worry about the extra file loads.

 

[TammyCampbell]

Im feeling overwhelmed by Gimp. a bitty image popped up.. and when I expanded it . Of course it looked an old sega video game. I didn't know what to do with that. It is totally going over my head. lol..

 

[TammyCampbell]

I will check out all suggestions.. Thank you!!

 

[TheLost]

I will check out all suggestions.. Thank you!!

Without starting a huge debate over the evil of adobe's cloud.. You can get both Photoshop and Lightroom for only $9.99 a month right now.
https://creative.adobe.com/plans/offer/photoshop+lightroom

 

[runnah]

Photoshop is still the boss. I use lightroom for editing huge batches, mostly timelapse stuff.