One talks of 'conversion' but really it is more accurate to call it 'selection' as what one is doing is choosing one of the manifold options encapsulated in a RAW file.
Clive's original is shown below left in DPP as it comes up from the CR2/RAW, L to R
the sharpness as set in the camera is '1', the image which is very soft, not as the one posted at beginning of this thread to its right.
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...1&d=1201124519
I am suggesting that it is better to get the appropriate degree of sharpness, by setting the scale to 7, right hand pic (which could have been done in camera parameters), still nowhere near the sharpness of the finished version at this point where DPP is 'selecting' the info from the sensor. At this stage the display is still only a PREVIEW. Conversion is only finished when you either go to 'tools>transfer to Photoshop' which sends the converted file as a tif to photoshop, or command D which converts and saves it in whatever form you choose.
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...1&d=1201124893
As what I was doing was trying editing in NX, I saved as tif and continued in NX. Had I started with a Nikon NEF/RAW file, I would likewise have set a practical level of sharpness in the camera controls, again, choosing from the options set by Nikon within the RAW file rather than use sharpen tool later as once you have progressed beyond (in NX) the Camera adjustments you are in the editing portion of the prog, not conversion portion. Again you are working on a preview that is only fully converted when you 'save as' some other file form. You can, and I would save the edited work as a .nef so that everything is still open for improving or changing later.
BTW one of the things I hated when using using PSE4 (at least on mac) was that the preview quality was atrocious, re-opening the saved file produced something markedly different, so making nonsense of the editing.