I recently purchased a new Nikon D7100 DSLR camera and was quite surprised to find out that it is not compatible with my Adobe CS5 Standard Edition Suite software.
From the little bit of info I found online, it appears that non-upgradable changes to the Camera Raw component between versions CS5 and CS6 have made my software incompatible with my new camera. This means that with my CS5 Standard Suite I cannot open RAW image files in Bridge or Photoshop.
The only two options I have found so far are:
[1] Upgrade my software to CS6 or CC: For me this is cost prohibitive.
[2] Use Adobe's RAW to DNG converter and then open the image files as DNGs in Bridge and Photoshop: It appears that the DBG converter is reducing the file size and this I assume (rightly to wrongly) that it might also be reducing the image quality. To facilitate maximum options in image post production, I want to maintain the extreme detail that RAW provides. I am not sure if DNG will retail the exact same level of detail and quality. Can anyone shed additional light on this?
[3] Are there any other option that I have missed that would allow me to upgrade the Camera Raw component of CS5 so that it is compatible with newer DSLRs like the Nikon D7100?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
irwin