NEF To JPG

.nef

NEF otherwise known as the Nikon Electronic Format is Nikon's RAW file format. RAW file formats contain minimally processed data from the image sensor of the digital camera - the metadata includes information about the lens, the settings, the cameras identification and other data. RAW files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor. RAW image formats are intended to capture as closely as possible the characteristics of the scene to include light intensity and colours.

The structure of RAW files, including the ISO standard RAW image format ISO 12234-2 follows a common pattern - a short header, camera sensor metadata, image metadata such as exposure settings, camera and lens model, date and sometimes the location. A thumbnail, a smaller JPEG file for quick viewing and the sensor image data. NEF is based on the TIFF format.

Nikon Inc.

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.jpg

JPG's are often used for web sites and email as they are generally smaller file sizes as they are lossy meaning that some image quality is lost when the JPG is compressed and saved. The resultant 'lossy' file means that quality can never be recovered. The JPG format is often used in digital camera memory cards. The JPG file is a great format as it often manages to compress files to 1/10 of the size of the original file which is especially good for saving on bandwidth.

JPG is a popular graphic format, which is characterized by a high degree of compression, which leads to a decrease in image quality. It uses the technology of encoding of smooth color renditions, providing the ability to reduce the amount of data frequently during the recording of the image. Because of the small size it is requested by the owners of websites, allowing you to save the traffic effectively. It is also frequently used in memory cards of digital video cameras. The JPG algorithm is optimally suitable for compressing photographs and pictures, in which realistic scenes with little contrast of colors are present. It is not recommended to use this format for compression of drawings and various kinds of graphics, since a strong contrast between a number of closely located pixels provokes the appearance of visible artifacts.

JPG is a graphical file format for editing still images, it offers a symmetrical compression technique which is processor intensive and time consiming in both compression and decompression. JPEG is a joint standard of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T T.81) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 10918-1). JPEG involves a lossy compression mechanism using discrete cosine transform (DCT). Compression rates of 100:1 can be achieved, although the loss is noticeable at that level. Compression rates of 10:1 or 20:1 yield little degradation in image quality.

The procedure for compressing the digital images in JPG format is carried out in several stages. First, the photo is transformed into a color space YCbCr, then it is divided into squares to determine the upper range of the color spectrum. Finally, the colors and brightness are coded. JPEG uses a "lossy" compression system and discrete cosine transform technology. The format acts simultaneously as the standard of ISO and the International Telecommunication Union. The file compression ratio is in the range from 10:1 to 100:1. In this case, the reduction in image quality can vary from insignificant to substantial.

The JPEG Committee

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