NOTE: It is very difficult to remember to switch image file formats prior to taking images. (5 to 10+ series of fast paced images is usually a lot for a small digital camera to handle.) If you’re always sharing images, JPEG is more commonly shared. JPEG only mode is also supposedly better for fast paced action such as aircraft. “JPEG only” format for the remainder of my photos, such as images of my property or images for my photo journal. Sometimes in tandem with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport or other grey shade cards, time permitting. Only using the NEF RAW fomat for “Oh my God” great looking cat images and other precious photos and/or still photos. I’ve recently switched within the past months from always using the NEF RAW format for all photos. Rather than batch convert RAW NEF files to TIFF or JPEG, I (batch) extracted the JPEG using exiftool. (Try a side by side comparison for yourself, you’ll likely see very little difference!) Interestingly with the NEF RAW file format, the NEF format usually embeds a ~2MB JPEG, and is very similar in detail/comparison to the larger ~10MB FINE JPEG file. With RAW images, RAW images are meant more for adjusting the image file’s apparence and gaining every last bit of detail. I’m in your same boat with open source software. PPS I forgot to mention that not all embedded images are necessarily JPG files! So make sure that you remember to change the file naming to reflect the file type. PS exiv2 is an alternative to exiftool if you would like to explore more options. The appended labels are actually tags so if you prefer the _ThumbnailImage embeds, try doing exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r. In my case, there are two resultant files: one with _PreviewImage appended to the filename and the other with _ThumbnailImage. Try doing exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir from above.

Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the current directory, adding _JFR.JPG for the name of the output JPG files.Įxiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dirĮxtract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage, JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory “dir”, adding the tag name to the output preview image file names.ĭcraw -e does in fact extract an embedded image, just not one that you may want. E.g.:Įxiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r.

If you like exiftool, there is much more you can do with it.

Nef to jpg converter batch