save psd or NEF?

[suecan]

When I open a photo from the organizer (Bridge) in Camera Raw my workflow is as follows: Edit in camera raw then click on Open Image. Do more editing in the Editor if needed (ie using clone tool) then close the photo. From that box choose Save and it is now saved in the Organizer (Bridge) twice, once as a psd and once still as an NEF. I don't think I need to save both, but which is the best one to save?
Hope this makes sense
Thanks
Sue

[riversidema]

If you save as an NEF you can go back and edit more, but you cannot change what you have already done. As a psd you can still alter the layers that you may have created and worked on.
Flexibility makes me lean towards the psd. If you have space I would save both though.

[TonyW]

You can't save a NEF - the NEF file is the original RAW image file and never gets changed. What does get saved is the edit data used in Camera Raw and that is save seperately either as an xmp sidecar file or in a database depending on your preference settings in Camera Raw. And that happens automatically when you close Camera Raw (unless you cancel it). If you want to keep edits made in the editor, layers etc then you need to save it as a psd or tif file. Think of your NEF file as the digital negative that you preserve as your original.

Tony

[dj_paige]

When I open a photo from the organizer (Bridge) in Camera Raw my workflow is as follows: Edit in camera raw then click on Open Image. Do more editing in the Editor if needed (ie using clone tool) then close the photo. From that box choose Save and it is now saved in the Organizer (Bridge) twice, once as a psd and once still as an NEF. I don't think I need to save both, but which is the best one to save?

I think you need to save both. Your NEF is your original file, and you should never delete your originals. Never. As in: deleting your original is a very bad idea. There are many threads here where someone has accidentally or purposefully deleted their original, and then they later find out that they need their original for some purpose, but they don't have their original and this is a bad situation.

So, you need to save both files.