The Plugin Site

There is a plugin called DCPro from www.silverfast.com that can open RAW files in Elements, but it costs approx $300.

A cheaper solution is Capture One LE from www.phaseone.com, which isn't a plugin, but lets you convert your files to a standard format that can be opened in Elements.

Another possibility is to buy Photoshop CS.

I have a plug-in (freeware) from Nikon which should do the trick: it's somewhere on the driver-CD you got with your camera and is called 'Nikon NEF plug-in.8bi'

If youd can't fine it, send me a mail (iheshusius @ hotmail.com) and I'll send it to you.

Cheerio

Or else use Konvertor, it will convert your NEF (and 950+ other formats) to any other format. http://www.konvertor.net/indexe.html

I just noticed that Elements 3 now includes the Camera RAW plugin from Photoshop CS and also supports 16bit images.