Saving raw?

In Photoshop, if I make any change to an NEF/RAW photo. What is the best/correct way to save it?
I don't see an option to save it as an NEF file. I do see a photoshop RAW file, but when I save it as that I get a warning about all of the changes possibly not being viewable the next time I open it.

I only ever edit in PS after exporting from lightroom. When I save any changes I make, PS saves it as tif and reimports the image back into lightroom for me leaving the .NEF untouched.

Jamesan said:

In Photoshop, if I make any change to an NEF/RAW photo. What is the best/correct way to save it?
I don't see an option to save it as an NEF file. I do see a photoshop RAW file, but when I save it as that I get a warning about all of the changes possibly not being viewable the next time I open it.

Click to expand...

It depends on what you plan on doing with the file.

If you're going to make a paper print then I'd tell you to save it as a .TIFF file. For web publishing .JPG is the standard. I always keep my original .NEF files archived, however.

....

Jamesan said:

In Photoshop, if I make any change to an NEF/RAW photo. What is the best/correct way to save it?
I don't see an option to save it as an NEF file. I do see a photoshop RAW file, but when I save it as that I get a warning about all of the changes possibly not being viewable the next time I open it.

Click to expand...

It is not the simplest answer, at least understanding is not. There is more to it than just a copy.

You keep your original NEF file, forever. The Raw editor never modifies it. It is always the original NEF file.

You Save the .xmp file. You copy them both when you move it, or if you let ACR do the move, it knows this. The ACR edit changes go into the accompanying .xmp file, which is just the list of the changes you have made. And any access, those changes are applied to a RGB copy of your original NEF file, and that RGB file is output, to your monitor, or to a JPG file, whatever.

The xmp file just stays in the folder with the NEF file. This shows your previous changes when you open it again. The warning was that if you don't also move the xmp file, you lose your list of previous edits.

This concept of unmodified NEF file, and the change list in the .xmp file, is the heart of the lossless editing feature in Raw. It is sort of mandatory, since we have no tools to change a Raw file, but it is also one of the biggest features. Whenever you decide you want a different white balance or brighter tones or whatever, have at it, change away, since you NEVER are shifting tones back and forth (which would not be lossless). Instead you are simply replacing one of the entries in the change list, with absolutely zero effect on your data, until you output some expendable copy.

The basis of any subsequent change is the original NEF file and your xmp previous change list.

So a .tiff is the highest quality file you can save it as?

TIF is the same RGB as JPG... TIF just has no JPG artifacts, and can be 16 bits.

So yes, in that sense (of ignoring Raw), but no, because any edits to TIF or JPG are lossy, you cannot recover your previous data. Your original NEF and the XMP file is the highest possible quality (your unmodified original and list of edits). You archive NEF and XMP. Anything else is expendable, always trivially output again from Raw.

Thanks WayneF. That is the info I needed. Now I can experiment and understand it fully...maybe......I think.

I should say that not many other people can deal with your Raw file, because they need the software, and the XMP file of course.

So if you do need some psuedo master copy to distribute to someone else, that best quality answer would be TIF. It would be independent of your software, but would represent your previous edits.

Or PNG is just as good, but is not as universally used and accepted as TIF.

Okay, thanks.

I use Capture NX-D, where all the edits are saved in a sidecar file. The NEF files remains as it is. The difference between RAW and TIFF (amongst other things) is that RAW file is what was output from the sensor, before demosaiking, that is before the Bayer pattern of RGGB (of four pixels) is converted to individual RGB. Thus in future if a better demosaiking algorithm comes you can get better colours. The RAW file is small because of two reasons
1. There is one data for each pixel. IN TIFF there will be three data for each pixel (R,G,B)
2. The data in RAW is packed, that is 12 bit has only 12 bits per data and 14 bit only 14 bits. In contrast TIFF has either 8 bits or 16 bits, making the 16bit TIFF that much larger.

For display (and printing) 16 bit TIFF gives the best option as it has more than 8 bits of jpeg, hence the colour gradation are smoother. For web where most displays cannot go beyond 8 bits, jpeg is more economical. Bot TIFF and jpeg can be compressed, TIFF usually is compressed loss less and jpeg lossy.