How To Open Nikon D7000's .NEF files in Photoshop

We've been shooting a bit on a Nikon D7000 (I'll post about it's video capabilities later on) and the stills look amazing. However, Apple Digital Camera Raw Compatibility update which lets Aperture and Preview (and Quicklook) open the files, doesn't let Photoshop open up the D7000's .NEF files. Weird right?

Looking around you find this page at Adobe. Which has a plug-in to open all sorts of still image formats.

But if you read the page you'll see this:

"The Camera Raw 6.4 plug-in is not compatible with versions of Photoshop earlier than Photoshop CS5."

"Camera Raw 6 is not compatible with Photoshop CS4."

What that means is that Photoshop CS4 can't natively open the D7000's .NEF files.

What to do?

You can check here what the minimum version of the plug-in is needed to open files from your camera; in this case it's 6.3.

Next, you look here to see what the highest version of the plug-in your software supports is; in my case CS4 supports up to version 5.7. So, I'm SOL.

If this is you, you need to install CS5 in order to open them in Photoshop or convert them to something Photoshop can open which kinda defeats the purpose of shooting Raw in the first place. Nice right?

What and how to convert?

Head over to here to download Adobe DNG Converter software. Although it does retain all the information post conversion, I think this is a bit nuts; making me convert all the stills after importing them, it's an extra step and I don't like extra steps. So my solution is to get the production to buy a copy of CS5 which they actually did. Crazy.

So if you have Photoshop CS4 and a Nikon D7000 you basically have four options:

1. Don't shoot Raw format.
2. Shoot Raw format and convert them all to DNG.
3. Upgrade to Photoshop CS5
4. Use Aperture instead of Photoshop.