Name | NEF | JPG |
Full name | Nikon Electronic Format | JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group |
File extension | .nef | .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe |
MIME type | image/nef | image/jpeg |
Developed by | Nikon Inc. | Joint Photographic Experts Group |
Type of format | Image File | lossy image format |
Description | 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 camera’s 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. | JPG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. |
Technical details | 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. | Image files that employ JPG compression are commonly called 'JPG files', and are stored in variants of the JIF image format. Most image capture devices (such as digital cameras) that output JPG are actually creating files in the Exif format, the format that the camera industry has standardized on for metadata interchange. |
File conversion | NEF conversion | JPG conversion |
Associated programs | Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Paint Shop Pro, Picasa, digiKam | Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, the GIMP, ImageMagick, IrfanView, Pixel image editor, Paint.NET, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer. |
Wiki | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG |