Okay, no one has asked me this yet but reading someone else's site, It's come to my attention I should have a short article on what I do to get my image from capture to print. I will gloss over a couple details like the intricacies of Unsharp Mask, or the finer points of file naming and archiving, but mostly you'll be able to get your image to print if you follow this short step by step process. One thing you should realize is this workflow is designed around a couple of assumptions. First, I'm using RAW files, or NEF's in Nikon's lingo. These types of files are equal to digital negatives. While extremely flexible, they do require a little bit more work to fully realize their potential

Step #1 - starting from your image browser software, import the image to your RAW converter. In this case--fig.1--I'm using iView as my browser. There are many kinds of different browsers out there including Photoshop's native version. The basic interface is the same for all of them. As you can see I'm using Nikon's NikonView software to convert my RAW files.

Step #2 - Once in Nikon View, I tweak the image by adjusting white balance and exposure. This is the beauty of RAW file formats. You can practically change the exposure or colors without degrading the basic quality of the image. Sure there are limits to these kinds of adjustments but in most cases, you have to make significantly large changes to really see any degradation. In our example, Nikon View only has limited/basic capabilities to change RAW files. Nikon Capture or Adobe's Raw Converter offer more options and capability.