In the past few years users would use two programs to process their Nikon NEF files.
First they use NX to obtain a good RAW image, then they would save them as TIFFs
and import into Lightroom. Well that may not be necessary anymore. Adobe has made
LR2.1 and 'Camera Matching Profiles' (Adobe Labs beta-2) available.
'Camera Matching Profiles' does what the name implies. It applies camera model
specific parameters to the raw image in the 'Develop Module'.
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles_FAQ