Nikon .NEF file iPad display quality

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Level 1

4 points

Nikon .NEF file iPad display quality

Hello,
I have added some RAW .NEF Nikon photos to my iPad and notice the display quality is pixelated somewhat and terrible to look at. I read somewhere that the iPad apparently takes the thumbnail image and not the actual photo when importing.

Can anyone tell me if this is the case or am I doing something wrong? JPEG photos are displayed correctly, I really don't want to convert all my photos to .JPEG before adding to my iPad.

Thanks

iPad, Windows 7

Posted on Sep 16, 2010 9:21 AM

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Answer 1

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Sep 16, 2010 10:09 AM in response to bamber223

My understanding is the same as yours. That is that the iPad displays the jpg thumbnail and does not process the RAW image. This makes sense since the tech spes says that for email attachment the iPad one supports: .jpg, .tiff, .gif.

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Answer 2

Sep 16, 2010 10:20 AM in response to bamber223

In theory, the iPad accepts JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and RAW. However, when photos are synced from iTunes they are "optimized" for the iPad...supposed to have more to do with storage space than picture quality.

That may be what is happening with the RAW files, they are usually very large, and really use conversion software to display and manipulate correctly.

Are you transfering the files directly from the camera or from a computer? Is there a conversion process involved in between the camera's storage and the iPad?

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Answer 3

bamber223 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 16, 2010 11:16 AM in response to Ralph Landry1

Hi,
I'm transferring from my PC to the iPad via iTunes so the photos are just RAW and haven't been converted at all.

Again, it would be a pain to convert my photos to JPEG in order to get them displayed correctly on the iPad as i have hundreds.

If this is an Apple software issue does anyone know how to let them know so maybe a solution can be included in the upcoming iPad update?

Thanks

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Answer 4

Mr.C UK

Level 2

410 points

Sep 16, 2010 11:34 AM in response to bamber223

http://www.apple.com/feedback

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Answer 5

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Sep 16, 2010 11:34 AM in response to bamber223

You can make suggestions to Apple here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

The only problem I see is that there is really no one "RAW" format. There is really no standard so camera manufactures do what they want to do. I have noted that there has been a lot of updates to iPhoto that have added the RAW capability for different cameras.

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Answer 6

Sep 16, 2010 11:41 AM in response to bamber223

How did you add the files? It may be different if you do it from the camera connection kit or synching from Aperture, from iPhoto or some other source.

Nevertheless, I also have the impression that the NEF files on the iPad are not top-notch quality. They seem sharper in Adobe Bridge than on the iPad. However, that could be because default sharpening is stronger in Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw.

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Answer 7

Feb 14, 2011 6:10 PM in response to bamber223

According to developer technical support at Apple, the iOS does not process RAW images. If the RAW image format contains a jpeg preview in the file (apparently this is fairly common, but perhaps effected by settings on your camera), applications asking to access the image will get the jpeg rendition. I'm not sure just yet what would happen if you attempt to open a RAW photo that has no jpeg rendition stored in it, but I suspect it is not supported at all from the information I received from Apple.

It appears that an issue cropped up in iOS 4.X that causes the jpeg rendition delivered to third party apps for some RAW formats to be at a very low (thumbnail) resolution. Prior to iOS 4, these images would work fine. In our testing it has been limited to RAW images in the Nikon format. Apple has acknowledged the issue and we hope a fix is coming in a future rev of the iOS.

In case you didn't know, when you sync your RAW photos to your computer and then back to the iPad they will be converted to jpegs. These should open and display at the expected resolution when used in apps on your iPad.

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Answer 8

May 3, 2011 4:29 AM in response to bamber223

Draging up an old thread here but having same issue, but its not a third party app causing the problem it is Itunes. i.e. It does NOT work when your synch from your computer but does if you miss that step out.

i.e.

You can import a NEFF file from an SD card and it displays fine (no doubt showing the embeded JPG guessing by the speed it appears).

However, once Itunese gets involved and you let it synch photos (NEFFS) back from your PC to your IPAD it really buggers the whole thing up.

So since the IPAD by itself seems to be fine it needs to be an update to Itunes to fix this problem.

Has anyone got a decent workaround yet other than running a "JPG only" folder version of all your NEF files?

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Answer 9

Nov 8, 2011 1:55 AM in response to bamber223

Same problem here:

I use the ipad alot for photo editing. It used to work fine with .nef files before I 'upgraded' to Ios 5.0.

It all sounds nice, syncing your photos to iCloud, but it downsizes your .nef files to 500k in the process now when syncing to the iPad. So worthless for photo editing or for me even just viewing photos on the ipad. When importing from the camera directly it seems fine, untill you want to sync with a pc or iCloud and sync back again. Only option I found is to not sync with iCloud for photos and convert all to .jpeg. This is a downgrade for me not an upgrade. I do not use iCloud because it can't handle my needs and now I am forced to convert all to jpeg. Photogene worked fine with .nef, for photo editing .nef is of much better quality than .jpeg. Why have a 64gb drive if your not allowed to have big .nef files on it?

Can I somehow get back to Ios 4.x?

Or someone knows if other devices like samsung (sorry Apple) handle .raw pics?

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