Opening NEF files off of hard drive *HELP*

Hi all, I'm having a serious issue that I hope somebody can help me with. I just bought a 750gb USB hard drive to copy over all my RAW photos to sort through later and free up my 32gb memory cards. The files transfer to the hard drive just fine, but when I attempt to open them I do not get the option of opening them in Lightroom. Even if I try the option to manually select which program to use in order to open the photos the computer doesn't even show Lightroom 4. What am I doing wrong?? I really need to free up room on these cards before I leave on vacation day after tomorrow, but I don't want to format the memory card if I am going to be unable to access my current pics.

Please help! =)

You will need to import the files into lightroom, Lightroom can only see files it has imported. Click import and browse to the the external HD and import the images.

You have to open Lightroom first, then import the files, and maybe you have to start a new catalog… I'm unfortunately not that well versed with Lightroom.

Good luck and please let us know about your findings.

Thanks for the quick replies. I'm not sure how to start a new catalog, but I did import all of them from the hard drive into Lightroom. Then I closed Lightroom and went back to the hard drive I was still unable to just open one picture directly from the hard drive. Does that make any sense?

You cannot open the NEF files directly... without installing special software on your computer that has the RAW Codex...

What you can do is import the files into LR... then use LR's Export process to export the files to a format like JPG, that your computer can recognize...

You can also import the NEF files into LR, and as the files are imported, LR can convert your NEF files to DNG files... which is an open source type file format that maintains the RAW elements with no compression... Other popular programs like Photoshop, can recognize, and open the DNG files...

Click HERE for codec download that will allow you to view RAW files with windows viewer.

Install the Microsoft Camera Photo Codec Pack.

Then associate the .NEF files with Lightroom as the default handler for that file type.

FredKingston said:

You cannot open the NEF files directly... without installing special software on your computer that has the RAW Codex...

What you can do is import the files into LR... then use LR's Export process to export the files to a format like JPG, that your computer can recognize...

You can also import the NEF files into LR, and as the files are imported, LR can convert your NEF files to PNG files... which is an open source type file format that maintains the RAW elements with no compression... Other popular programs like Photoshop, can recognize, and open the PNG files...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Fred! Learning the ins and outs of Lightroom has been a challenge. Dealing with jpegs only was pretty easy. ;-)

Man you guys are great, thanks so much for the help!