NEF files preview (thumbnails) in Ubuntu

If you are a photographer and you shoot in RAW, you may have this ‘problem’: By default, Ubuntu doesn’t display thumbnails for NEF files (and other RAW formats), unlike for PG. Ubuntu comes with preinstalled application – F-Spot Photo Manager, which can open NEF files. But, if you like to preview your RAW photographs just like they are JPG, here is a possible solution.

First, I installed Gnome-Raw-Thumbnailer by typing  sudo apt-get install gnome-raw-thumbnailer in Terminal. Here is the ‘website’ http://gnome-raw-thumb.sourceforge.net/. Doesn’t seem very serious. And this does’t work. For now.

Second step is to install UFRaw. Here is the website http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html. Download .deb package and intall it. Process is straight-forward, and I wouldn’t explain it in details here.

Third, and final step. Type gconf-editor in Terminal. Then go to desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@x-ufraw and desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/image@x-nikon-nef, and enable both of this things (check ‘enable’).

Now, you should be able to view NEF thumbnails.  This should also work for other RAW formats.

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