D2X and PS CS

Hmm, am I missing something here? My understanding was that for PS to read D2X NEF file, you would need ACR 3.1 which means either PS CS2 or PE3.0 at the least. I got myself a copy of PS CS2 and installed it on one of my computer. However I also have a copy of CS on my back up computer so I thought, why not, and used it to open uncompressed NEF file from my D2X and it works just fine with the old NEF plugin that I used for my D70. Granted that it did not give me much adjustment beside EV and a bit on white balance, nothing liked Capture4 or ACR3.1 but anyhow, just wondering if I misunderstood this the whole time and upgraded for no good reason . I can opened the file with CS directly or via Nikon View 6, just take a little longer than my D70 NEF file (expected since it is 4 times the size).

You are using the Nikon NEF plugin in CS, rather than the ACR plugin. So yes, it will read the file, but it won't let you make the level of adjustments that ACR will.

Alex

I see. In PS, is there really a difference between adjust EV, contrast, sharpening etc etc in ACR vs doing it in PS itself? I thought the biggest advantage of using RAW was just so that you can download "as shot" picture and bypassing all the automatic adjustment done by the camera. Now, having the ability to adjust lots of things twice in ACR then in PS, is that just redundant or is there really a logical explaination for why I would want to do it in ACR or PS over one another?

Sara, sorry about your confusion.

The ugrade should be worthwhile for you.

The optimum raw workflow would probably be for you to open your raw files in Bridge (CS2) and use the raw convertor (ACR) to make all of your needed adjustment there. The only thing you will be missing is the "as shot" white balance, but this is the place to adjust it anyway.

Any adjustments you make in ACR will be easier, and likely better, than similar adjustments within Photoshop after the conversion.

If you are happy with the result in ACR, you can also save the file in another format directly from Bridge.

If you want to sharpen after the conversion, before down-resing for the net, you can just open in PS from the convertor.

Thanks for the tip. I suppose using Bridge/ACR + CS2 does make the workflow a lot smoother than Nikon View + CS. However ACR just does not have enough tools (at least I have not been able to figure out how to do manual level adjustment yet on ACR yet and that is pretty much the first thing I use before tinkering with anything else).

For now, my common routine would be to open NEF file +- EV adjustment, manual level then brightness/contrast, hue/sat and shadow/highlight (not all pics required all the steps), resize then sharpen. ACR adjustment just does not seem to fall quite in that routine and I would end up using CS2 anyhow. So far, beside smart sharpening which looks interesting, there is not much else in CS2 that I found a big advantage over CS.

Oh well, I will experiment more and see...