Nikon Electronic Format

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Main Page > Documentation > Format-specific preservation plans > Nikon Electronic Format


Also known as

  • NEF
  • Nikon Image Format
  • Nikon Digital SLR Camera Raw Image File

File extension(s)

  • .nef

Format registry information

Significant properties

Preservation action plan

Preservation issues

  • NEF is a proprietary format with an unpublished specification.
  • NEF files can be very large - 70 MB or more.
  • Xena incorrectly guesses the file type as TIFF and normalizes as it would a TIFF, with the result that a very large file (e.g. 70 MB) is normalized to a very small one (eg. 250 KB) with considerable loss of data. Changes to the raw file (ie: alterations done in image editing software) are stored in a separate XMP file, which Xena also does not recognize, and does not normalize together. This means that any edits added by the creator are removed.
  • Possible preservation plan is normalization to Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) format
    • Library of Congress states that Adobe Digital Negative (DNG), Version 1.1 may be emerging as a standard preservation format for raw camera images.
      • Adobe provides a free (but not open-source) Adobe DNG Converter designed for downloading to Windows or Mac computers.
      • An open-source option for converting RAW image files to DNG is DigiKam.
  • Another preservation option is conversion to JPEG2000.

Conversion test results

Access format

More information