What with CNX2 apparently being phased out, I am seriously thinking of LR as my main editing platform.  In CNX2, I'd save my images as NEFs and JPEGs.  Besides JPEG, what are the options in LR?I ask because TIFFs are huge compared to NEFs.  Are DNG files a good alternative?  With a 24mp image, typically, how large are they?

Hi. I have a D7100 and use LR5. It can handle, NEF's, JPEG, TIFF, DNG and PSD files. It's processing engine handles D7100 raw files very well.

Brandon birder wrote:Hi. I have a D7100 and use LR5. It can handle, NEF's, JPEG, TIFF, DNG and PSD files. It's processing engine handles D7100 raw files very well.thanks.  What size are the D7100 files when saved as DNG's or PSD's?

I made the switch from CNX2. Lightroom edits remain in NEF.  For external editors and plug-ins, I use 16-bit TIFF as much as possible. This does result in many intermediate TIFF files, and I suppose I should be diligent about cleaning them up, but I just got another 4TB hard drive, so I'm not concerned.

BillD7000 wrote:thanks. What size are the D7100 files when saved as DNG's or PSD's?At full res (6000 x 4000) the DNG was around 24MB and the PSD was around 137MB.

Yeah, to clarify this a bit more, since you seem to be concerned about file size: When you edit in LR, you don't actually have to save the file as anything other than the original NEF - which you can store on your internal hard drive or an external drive. The edits are made in what's called a sidecar file, which is very small. You only convert to jpg or tiff or whatever when you export the file, either to print or put online or email to someone or to edit further in a different program. So, unless you are deleting your NEF files after you import into CX2, you will most likely be saving space with LR.

BillD7000 wrote:What with CNX2 apparently being phased out, I am seriously thinking of LR as my main editing platform. In CNX2, I'd save my images as NEFs and JPEGs. Besides JPEG, what are the options in LR?I ask because TIFFs are huge compared to NEFs. Are DNG files a good alternative? With a 24mp image, typically, how large are they?As a matter of interest, what is the purpose of storing a JPEG?

Bill, LR keeps whatever you import the original file format - jpg or TIF, depending on what your camera produced. as said it then creates a sidecar file which can be smallHowever, if you choose to generate full size previews, the space requirement grows.  But i have found on my aging system LR takes quite a while to load the settings and apply them to the raw file so it is a tradeoff for speed versus storage space.Here are some pros and conspros1. lr can handle nefs and apply all kinds of effects to them. i used to mess with my photos in photoshop but find i can do 95% of what o need in LR2. if you are diligent during import and correctly apply keywords LR is a very powerful way to organize your collection. indeed it has a collections function which is powerful.3. it is a kind of all in one solution for almost all your needs excepting HDR and panoramas or where you want to do some serious editing.4. if you have latest version of LR and photoshop you can export NEF to photoshop and the edits you made are preserved. ( i don't so have to go through conversion to .tiff or jpg)5. it is good value for moneyCons1. it can be slow on old systems like mine ( and not really fast on my i7 laptop actually) when applying settings to NEF files2. it is a fairly steep learning curve to learn properly3. in camera settings are ignored if you use NEF: you need to apply the settings in LR4. you lose some info NX shows such as focus pointhope this helpsBrett

camelguy wrote:Yeah, to clarify this a bit more, since you seem to be concerned about file size: When you edit in LR, you don't actually have to save the file as anything other than the original NEF - which you can store on your internal hard drive or an external drive. The edits are made in what's called a sidecar file, which is very small. You only convert to jpg or tiff or whatever when you export the file, either to print or put online or email to someone or to edit further in a different program. So, unless you are deleting your NEF files after you import into CX2, you will most likely be saving space with LR.VERY HELPFUL!  Thanks.  Didn't know NEFs can be saved as such on LR.  Does the sidecar get automatically bundled with the NEF?My concern IS size, because 100+mb TIFFs aren't something I'd like to be my maid storage file. NEFs are less than half that, and it looks like DNGs aren't that large either.Thanks!

parkie wrote:BillD7000 wrote:thanks. What size are the D7100 files when saved as DNG's or PSD's?At full res (6000 x 4000) the DNG was around 24MB and the PSD was around 137MB.Is the DNG a non-compressed file?  I had thought that it was.

As a matter of interest, what is the purpose of storing a JPEG?My "keepers" I store as NEFs & full res/size JPEGs.  It saves time when accessing the JPEG for uploading/printing/selling.  I don't have to re-open CNX2 just to make a quick conversion.  Also, when I look at a file that's been stored that way, it helps me remember it is a favorite of a given scene.

BillD7000 wrote:As a matter of interest, what is the purpose of storing a JPEG?My "keepers" I store as NEFs & full res/size JPEGs. It saves time when accessing the JPEG for uploading/printing/selling. I don't have to re-open CNX2 just to make a quick conversion. Also, when I look at a file that's been stored that way, it helps me remember it is a favorite of a given scene.A blurb about JPEGS, this is what I know, which is not much, but because of the file compression of JPEGS, which as you know file size is considerably less then a tiff or NEF, one of the reasons is JPEGS have about 250 shades of gray, whereas TIFFS and NEFS have ten times more. Since I shoot only in raw (NEF) I don't worry about the compression since it is not a compressed file, I just save everything I want to keep in a TIFF. Converting it to a JPEG using photoshop for various reasons, one is to publish KB size files on the web. As a rule, I don't keep JPEGS, not that I don't have enough space, but having all the photos to wade through in an already cluttered system makes it that much harder.I remember my first hard drive was about 820 mb's, I thought I would never fill it up. Now I have several 2 TB hard drives, a few 1.5's and a few 1's and I am always concerned about filling them up.

In fact, Adobe Camera Raw, which is the Raw processor that comes with Lightroom, never saves or overwrites your NEF file. The original NEF is sacred and is treated essentially as Read-Only. Personally, I value this characteristic highly. The sidecar file is an actual separate file with the same name but a different extension. If you delete the sidecar file, ACR will simply open the NEF the same way it did when you first opened it fresh off the camera.Because of this, everything you do in ACR can be undone or altered further, including things like cropping. This can be done within ACR. It's not necessary to delete the sidecar file.TIFFs can be regarded as one way of preserving various states that you may have created in ACR. The organizer in Lightroom makes it easy to maintain the associations between your original NEFs and various "versions" you might have created from them. If your needs are not quite as rigorous, JPEGs can also be used to save versions of the same image, and the file sizes will be much smaller.Note that, as large as TIFFs are, PSDs will be much larger because the PSD format supports layers and various other information in addition to just the color values for each pixel. PSD sizes can vary significantly because they are at least partially dependant on what edits you have performed since leaving ACR.

J Mountford wrote:A blurb about JPEGS, this is what I know, which is not much, but because of the file compression of JPEGS, which as you know file size is considerably less then a tiff or NEF, one of the reasons is JPEGS have about 250 shades of gray, whereas TIFFS and NEFS have ten times more.TIFFs and NEFs have a lot more than ten times as many levels per color than JPEG actually.JPEG uses 8 bits per color, so that gives you 2^8 (2-exponent-8) levels, or 256 levels, labelled 0 through 255.NEF uses either 12 bits per color or 14 bits per color, depending on how you're saving your Raw files. 12 bits per color gives you 4096 levels, which is 16 times as many levels as JPEG. Note that 12-8=4 and 2^4=16.TIFFs are often configured to use 16 bits per color. You can see where this is going. Each primary color in the TIFF file has 65,536 levels available to it, which (surprise!) is 256 times as many levels as the JPEG, and 4 times as many as a 14 bit NEF. It allows the editing process to introduce additional levels.Everything is powers of 2, and the power is determined by the number of bits you have.This all sounds great, but, except for very special images that may be put through many generations of editing for a large print, it's overkill. If you're going to edit it once or twice and display it on the Internet, JPEG is fine. Monitors that display more than 8 bits per color are very rare.One of several real advantages of Raw, IMHO, is that you get to decide which 8 bits, out of the original 12 or 14, you want to see in your final JPEG image. If you shoot JPEG, the algorithms on the camera make that decision for you.

J Mountford wrote:A blurb about JPEGS, this is what I know, which is not much, but because of the file compression of JPEGS, which as you know file size is considerably less then a tiff or NEF, one of the reasons is JPEGS have about 250 shades of gray, whereas TIFFS and NEFS have ten times more.I have commercial prints done from uploaded, full-size, highest quality JPEGs and the results are fantastic -- printed up to 24x36 (which I commonly sell).I know that TIFFs are certainly better than JPEGs, but I'm not sure the differences are always perceptible on photo-paper.  So it's a difference of a 100+mb upload vs. a 20mb upload.  And not all print makers will accept TIFFs.

Both of you are right more then I am rightWhen I was living and working in China, my brother who owns several companies asked me to send him some of my photos to decorate his home and businesses. I asked him how he wanted them sent and his man who did all the printing asked for TIFFS so he could tweek the colors. That is pretty much were I got my information was from was his advice. The results, when I came back to the states for a visit was pretty nice.Several things, when I got back into photography seriously after I moved to China in 2006 all the Photoshop manuals were in Chinese and YouTube was blocked. So for me it was trial and error, lots of errors,Jim

BillD7000 wrote:camelguy wrote:Yeah, to clarify this a bit more, since you seem to be concerned about file size: When you edit in LR, you don't actually have to save the file as anything other than the original NEF - which you can store on your internal hard drive or an external drive. The edits are made in what's called a sidecar file, which is very small. You only convert to jpg or tiff or whatever when you export the file, either to print or put online or email to someone or to edit further in a different program. So, unless you are deleting your NEF files after you import into CX2, you will most likely be saving space with LR.VERY HELPFUL! Thanks. Didn't know NEFs can be saved as such on LR. Does the sidecar get automatically bundled with the NEF?By default LR does not save sidecar files but instead saves editing metadata in its database. You can configure LR to also save sidecar files too if you need to.My concern IS size, because 100+mb TIFFs aren't something I'd like to be my maid storage file. NEFs are less than half that, and it looks like DNGs aren't that large either.If you can do all your editing in LR (with LR5 I can 95% of the time) then you don't need to create TIFFs. LR leaves the NEF untouched and saves all you editing and virtual copy metadata in it database. You only need to generate TIFFs when you export from LR to PS or a plugin. For me thats only when I need more clean up than I can do in LR (very rarely) or when I want to create a composite.Thanks!RegardsJohn