d100 RAW processing

[Color Canuck]

(moved from the D1x,D1h,D100 forum thread: d100 camera settings)

A: there is a RAW Photo Processing Forum, I am moving your question and my answer there.

I don't use PhotoShopElements but...

"6. Using with Photoshop Elements
When you use the Nikon NEF plug-in with Photoshop Elements, you will be presented with an error dialog box when you attempt to open a NEF file. The error message indicates, "This document is in an unsupported color depth.Convert to default color depth?". This message is displayed because the Nikon
NEF plug-in tries to pass the image data in 16 bit depth per color to keep the highest possible quality, however the Photoshop Element application only supports image data in 8-bit depth per color. You must press "Yes" button on the error dialog and accept the image in 8-bit depth per color. Photoshop Elements will not open the NEF file if the "No" button is pressed." ___NikonView 5 ReadMe

For your RAW workflow I would suggest using NikonView's Nikon Editor to do your initial processing of your NEF's. I prefer 16bitTIFFfiles for preproduction resizing and sharpening, but given where you are at the 8bitTIFF will probably have to suffice. JPEG is okay but does discard data. If you don't plan on doing much hard resizing or alterations to the file at a later date and space/size is a consideration then sure. But I would recomend you keep TIFF or NEF and do 'save as jpegs' as you go along until you know what you really want.

Note: to use PSE to open NEFs you must copy the Nikon NEF Plugin into your PSE PlugIns File Formats folder.