🚀 go-pugleaf

Kat ...

At first glance, all NEF files--regardless of the Nikon they came out of-- have a better colo(u)r fidelity when opened with NV (NikonView) or NC (Nikon Capture). The reasons alluded for this is that Nikon does not share their proprietary colo(u)r information t with third party developers. To extrapolate that information--most parties need to guess. And they do a reasonably good job--but not nearly as good as those in the know--Nikon.

      Why not use The Nikon NEF plug-in instead if it provides a better quality
      image upon opening the file




That's a fair question--why not? If the photography you do does not require any additional non-linear processing, and you are satisfied with what you get out of the camera, or the limited functionality of Nikon's plug-in--then by all means you don't need ACR. Don't use it. Any of Nikon's processing tools will suit you.

If however, you're like me and you require a workflow for processing photos for print--i.e. books and magazines-- ACR has superior tools which allows improvement upon the initial extrapolations, and provide a wide array of media options w/o any loss in picture fidelity. I would argue that sometimes I can achieve a gain in fidelity.

NC is Nikon's tool which offers capabilities comparable to ACR. In some cases--I feel--it does an even better job than ACR, but for most of my work ACR wins hands-down. In particular for speed and batch processing in Photoshop.

      Once a clean file is open, then adjustments can easily be made afterwards...




Not quite. If the file is rendered into a linear colo(u)r space, then many of the benefits of processing from a non-linear colo(u)r space (like ACR and NC do) cannot be easily achieved afterwards--at least not without a loss in fidelity. What benefits? Benefits such as white balance adjustment, +/- EV compensation, superior interpolation--just to name a few.

It's all in the level of control. When I buy photographs for books or magazines, I really don't want the photographers print or digital files. I want their RAW files so that I can process them in a way I know they'll look good and reflect their vision when they go to print. Hence I most often use photographers whom provide RAW files-- which I know I can make work with ACR.

In order to further investigate and weigh the benefits of working in ACR, I would suggest further reading. I like to recommend Bruce Frasers's book: Real World Camera Raw w/Adobe Photoshop CS. ISBN 0-321-27878-X Bruce is so ahead of his time--he's copyrighted in 2005!

good luck! :-)