I agree... and sometimes to an extent... the cameras own internal raw/jpeg converting mechanisms...

An example would be my D60... at high ISO's the incamera noise reduction smokes the Nikon NEF to JPG converters in NX. This is unbelievably stupid and annoying. Nikon is for some reason unable to reproduce their noise reduction algorithm in their own transfer software. This was even mentioned in a recent pop photog.

I'm better off shooting JPEG at ISO800... if not I have to run my NEF's through noise reduction processes AFTER THE CONVERSION TO JPG....

Of all the camera makers... Nikon is noted as the worst for providing 3rd party software developers (ie adobe) any information regarding their propriatary NEF format. This leave developers to "best guess" how to process the image.

If Nikon made anything close to reasonable developing software, I would understand the pensiveness. Nikon really needs to put some money into developer software and have a firm understanding of its importance in todays digital market. Their current software is very poorly constructed. It's a huge resource hog under a poor, time consuming, mono style framework.

Adobes Lightroom2 exemplifies a speedy and logical developing workspace. The only thing that slows me down is they haven't nailed Nikons (or at least the D60's) nef format. So I have to spend extra time bringing the RAW file in line with what the jpeg would have looked like. The Nikon software starts you off with the RAW file processing with the in camera settings. I like this because I spend time setting up my camera for a shoot. Lightrooms conversion is so far off I shouldn't even bother setting up the camera.