However, unlike JPG, PNG files can have transparent or semi-transparent backgrounds around a design. Like JPG, PNG is a 2D ‘raster’ image format. The file extension PNG is short for ‘Portable Network Graphic’, and the format was created to offer improvements over the GIF format. Nikon also has its own photo-processing application for different operating systems. Nikon is an extremely popular camera brand, so you can open NEF files in most photo viewers and editors, including Microsoft Photos, Google Photos, Apple Photos, Apple Preview, Adobe Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro and Canvas. Nikon recommends converting photos afterwards to share them, rather than before. However, although they’re big files, raw images are generally preferred for editing or printing, because more details in the image are preserved. You can change your camera settings to save the files into a different format on the camera’s memory card. Raw NEF images contain the image captured on the camera’s sensor and also metadata, including details of the camera model, and the date and time the camera was set to. It’s the file extension for photographs taken on a Nikon digital camera. An NEF file is a raw digital image in Nikon Electronic Format.
