Whats the deal with this DNG Format?

sid

sid

sid

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I guess this will be a thing which is likely to concern many of us here as photoshop moves to a subscription based service.

This means that ACR updates for new cameras will not trickle down to older users of CS4/5/6

I have recently purchased a panasonic G6 and found that there is no way to use the RAWs with ACR unless I convert to DNG first.

Does anyone know if information is lost during the DNG conversion process?? or does it simply change file headers??

Are there different versions of DNG files? Or will they work with all versions of ACR?
 
DNG is essentially Adobe's own RAW format, I know lots of people who convert their RAW files to DNG for space saving reasons and they have never complained about a lack of information in the files.

If you are someone that like to push shadows or highlights hard in processing then I suppose technically there could some potential loss of range in the files on 14-bit RAWs for example but I wouldn't see it as anything to worry about on your G6.
 
sid said:
So it is lossy is what you are saying then?
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Potentially but being as all the data from the original RAW is mapped over to the new .DNG file then it shouldn't.

DP or An Exception maybe able to advise you in a more technical sense but on the few occasions I've personally converted to DNG I can't say I've noticed and I do sometimes push shadows quite hard in post.

I've also got 2 friends who shoot weddings and they both convert to DNG as well as the file sizes are significantly smaller for storage purposes.

Btw I presume you are using lossless DNG and not lossy?
 
I only use DNG for archiving purposes, because:

1- you retain the advantage of RAW
2- smaller file size
3- it retains all editing steps from Lightroom.
 
The few times I've used DNG for various reasons it's been perfectly fine, the only reason I don't use it more as it just stacks up as a bit of a waste of time - I have plenty of storage for the amount of shooting I'm doing nowadays and adding another step of conversion is a bit of hassle. If you don't mind the conversion process it's a very useful format but ultimately the main time I convert is either tiff for big editing jobs or jpeg for export, I don't feel much of a need to add another conversion to the beginning.
 
As mentioned in the OP, this is not about saving HDD space or anything.

Its bascialyl about being able to edit raws with ACR.

Since many people will not fork out for CC , it is likely to affect many soon.

I do wonder if Adobe will allow DNG files from latest cameras to be used with ACR. It is something that will affect sales as many will cling on older versions and use DNG.

Ofc you miss out on the latest features of CC but not really relevant for many.
 
I used to use Canon's RAW files but then decided to start converting to DNG for no other reason than to 'give it a go'. I saw no difference in editing ability so I stuck with it for the space saving.
 
I may be completely wrong about this, but i also understood that DNG was a 'standard' too so potentially could be supported by multiple programs without the problems of proprietry 'raw' formats.
Future proofing too as the idea was that it will continue to be supported even if a camera maker stops support for their own 'raw' format.
 
ajf said:
I may be completely wrong about this, but i also understood that DNG was a 'standard' too so potentially could be supported by multiple programs without the problems of proprietry 'raw' formats.
Future proofing too as the idea was that it will continue to be supported even if a camera maker stops support for their own 'raw' format.
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There is this aspect. If you shoot a camera that is not from CaNikon there is some chance that the company will just stop making cameras and supporting anything (Nikon is also potentially vulnerable since they rely almost entirely on photography but it is extremely unlikely).

DNG is an open standard so no reverse engineering is required soothe tidally your files are more future proof. Thing is currently there is far more support for Nikon (or Pentax etc.) raws than DNG. Also all the 3rd party raw converters that exist now have never had official support, just people reverse engineering it. So it is hard to imagine that all of a sudden all of this ability disappears.


What is useful and will probably make me switch is that DNG supports the edits made by software like lightroom. Therefore is lightroom because subscription only without backwards support you might be screwed if you don't use some thing like DNG files. However, I believe the LR edit files are actually entirely transparent (some kind of XML schema) and the DNG format just tacks this same formatted dat on to the end of the raw image data. Therefore I don't think the DNG is really that much more secure. I might be wrong here, I haven't looked in close detail.



As for compression/files size. All raw files have compression, normally just lossless as that makes the most sense for a RAW file. On Nikon cameras you can also use a lossy compression which is likely very similar to what DNG does.
 
When I compared my Nikon raw files to the converted DNG files, I pushed the shadows and the highlights in the same amounts and the resulting images were exactly the same :) DNG seems to use much less space but retain the same amount of information.
 
Inazuma said:
When I compared my Nikon raw files to the converted DNG files, I pushed the shadows and the highlights in the same amounts and the resulting images were exactly the same :) DNG seems to use much less space but retain the same amount of information.
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Did you try comparing the compress Nikon raws (only available on newer Nikon bodies)? I doubt you will find much difference in file size.
 
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