I would like to have the capability of using the Nikon 800 Active D-Lighting when I want it.
My organizing and basic (gross) adjustments happen in Lightroom 5.3. Lightroom, and as near as I can find, NO Adobe products (Lightroom, Bridge, Photoshop) can read the ADL information from a Nikon D800 .NEF, so apparently I have to go outside my normal workflow to incorporate the ADL data.
I'm looking for the simplest and most efficient way to get from a NEF that has information Adobe won't read to some kind of raw file (a .dng?) WITH the ADL data. So far, the only path I've found is to open the images in View NX2 and convert them to 16-bit tiff files because View NX2 doesn't have any "convert to dng" that I can find.
Then, I have to open the tiff files in Bridge (or LR), shove them into ACR, and save them as .dng files. Aside from being clumsy, the .dng files are HUGE... a 48MB .NEF becomes a 42MB (approximately) .dng file. BUT, if I go through View NX2 and generate .tiff files, the tiff conversion to .dng generates a file between 110 and 120MB - almost THREE TIMES larger than a .dng created directly from the .nef.
Is there a reasonable way of getting a source file into Bridge orLightroom that incorporates the data in the Nikon .NEF?