[Update: Thanks to Laurent for correcting the attribution of the code! Also, the Nikon NEF SDK decrypts the WB info too.

Some of us are plenty happy to let CaptureNX, Photoshop, and others worry about turning our NEF’s into something usable, but various intrepid people (who’re smart than I am) like lclevy (Dave Coffin) just can’t let a challenge like encrypted whitebalances alone.

So he’s posted a wad of info on the NEF format and its header as well as some C code for you to open up the whitebalance info.

Interesting (to me), it’s based on the TIFF format. Otoh, the TIFF format is so flexible that I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Luckily, he’s hosted it in France, so there’s no change of DMCA take-down notice being filed.

Anyone not running Vista 64 bit can totally ignore this post.

Top .5% and developers still here? Ok- we all know Nikon’s using a 32bit shell extension in order to show the preview thumbnails in Explorer when you select View and the icon sizes (like “Large”).

Unfortunately, 64bit Explorer can’t use 32bit shell extensions (what happened to thunking?) so can’t show anything but the NEF-associated icon itself. But I came across a post that said that we can launch the 32bit explorer like this:

%windir%\SysWOW64\explorer /separate

and heck if I didn’t get my previews back!

[Edited for typos- MUST stop posting near midnight...]