Comments on: To DNG or Not to DNG?

By: tifkat

tifkat — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:37:23 +0000

Note: Open (as in fully documented; nothing hidden) does not equal Open-Sourced. DNG is patented and copyrighted by Adobe. No one else can change it. They grant a royalty free license which they can revoke, and/or change at their disgression. I can understand OEMs not adopting it.

Prehaps Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Ricoh (who now own Pentax) should form an association with Adobe, the developers of GIMP and other software developers and create a truly-open, “free” and un-incumbered, standards-organisation-ratified format (this would be a format AND a standard). That way all can have input, all can adopt it without fear of being refused a license and the entire community (from ameteurs to professionals, for private and business purposes) would truly benefit. Then widespread adoption would make sense.

DNG IS NOT A “Standard”. It’s a format. We need a standard, and an “open community” one at that.

By: tifkat

tifkat — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:13:54 +0000

Actually, it’s NOT “open source”. It’s created and patented by Adobe, who grant a royalty free license, WHICH THEY CAN REVOKE at will, to use. They also reserve the right to change that license.

Potentially, Adobe could get everyone on-board and then change the license to require software and hardware developers to start paying royalties.

A truly open standard which is ‘owned’ by no one specific company, but a community based ‘standards organisation’ is what is really needed.

By: David Llewellyn

David Llewellyn — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:25:28 +0000

I have a Pentax K-7 and have shot several hundred photos recently in DNG, then imported them into LR3. This worked very well, but I have a major problem. I shoot mainly away from home and load the photos on to a powerful laptop. When I get home I then copy them on to my main computer, which has more storage and a bigger screen, to do some final tweaking and perhaps modify the meta data. Finally, I like to synchronise the two machines. With the meta data in XMP files, this does not take too long, but with DNG, if one character of meta data or any other setting is changed, then the entire 10 Mbyte file must be copied. It takes AGES to copy several hundred photos!. So I want to convert my DNGs back to RAW + XMP!

I think the idea of a standardised format is a good one, but for those of us who want to work with two computers, we need the XMP sidecar files separate from the image file so that synchronisation during and after processing does not take too long.

By: Chuck Manley

Chuck Manley — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:18:17 +0000

I shoot with a Pentax K2000 and I shoot in DNG. I do so for many reasons. First is that I have been using Adobe graphic programs for a long time. Much longer than the past 2 years I’ve been shooting with Pentax. Much longer than when I was shooting with my canon, fuji, and kodak point and shoots. It makes more sense to me to embrace a format that will be around when I switch to another camera maker.

Then there is of course the file size.

I think Adobe knows digital graphics more than pentax, sony, nikon, olympus, fuji, canon, or whatever you shoot with. When it comes to buying cameras, I’ll let camera makers handle that aspect. When it comes to digital graphics, Adobe just does it better than the rest. So I support that with confidence.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 20:16:37 +0000

I’m using a Nikon D80. I can use View2 to see the focus points of any NEF file. It seems that converting from NEF to DNG looses the ability to view the focus points. I’m not sure if DNG is losing the focus info or I’m simply unable to view it since View2 does not support DNG.

By: TomOnTheRoof

TomOnTheRoof — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:55:50 +0000

I convert to DNG for one reason – dng files can store a custom camera profile. So if I move a photo with a custom profile from one catalog to another (even to a different machine), it looks the same. Also no worries if my catalog gets corrupted – i will not loose the custom profiles as they will be within the dngs.

Initially i import my photos as raw files, so i can quickly start working on them and my edits can be backed up in almost no time (small xmps). I let the conversion to dng happen after i am done with the edits.

By: Nick Eakins

Nick Eakins — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:21:55 +0000

Hi Carlos.
I notice you say that you wrote software to check the DNG file is at least 60% the size of your original file. I have started converting to DNG (as well as keeping the NEF’s) and notice that ALL my DNG files are about 60% the size of the original 14 Bit NEF. This reduction in file size to only 60% of the original NEF worries me a little when i see that nearly everyone else talks about only a 20 % reduction in file size. What do you think ?
I also notice that when i open a DNG file in Photoshop it shows as only an 8 bit image. Is this because i am looking at a jpeg preview instead of the actual DNG image or are DNG’s made as only 8 bit files? When exporting as DNG from Lightroom there are no file/bit size preference choices

By: armando

armando — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:40:56 +0000

True but I think it would become a standard even faster if more people adopted it. Personally, I recently switched my whole catalogue to DNG and I have to say, I’m quite happy with it. I guess the backup stuff other people mentioned is true but then again, I don’t want to be worrying about two files when switching from one computer to the next… it doesn’t make sense. Either way, I hope more people switch to DNG so we have to stop worrying about compatibility and start focusing more on photography.

By: Vince

Vince — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:33:12 +0000

I’ve played around with DNG and like the format just fine (ie. I have no issue with output quality). My concern with using it as a single archive format is the lack of 3rd party support. Using any software that I’m aware of outside Adobe and their plugin partners, a DNG must be once again converted to another file format (tif, jpg, etc). Every subsequent conversion loses and corrupts at least some data – even if only a trivial amount. It’s a cumulative process. If you want to work in Photomatix, you can’t use DNG. DxO, no DNG. Forget integrating any Nikon software into your workflow, and while I only use the newest version of ViewNX, it’s still better that Adobe at retrieving in camera settings.

My new year’s resolution (2011) is to “double” my initial workflow step in archiving both the NEF and the DNG. I’ll use the DNG format when working only in Adobe (which is 90% of the time). The NEFs will subsequently get burned (with keywords) to DVD and kept in an offsite location. With the NEFs intact, I have the option to work in more specialized software without a likely degradation resulting from further format conversion.

Overkill? Likely. More versatile? Unfortunately. Safe? Definitely.

By: Andrew Federman

Andrew Federman — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:52:55 +0000

This seemingly small point is actually huge. For Time Machine users (and probably most other backup solution users), the minimizing of large files that change frequently can really keep your backup database from getting too big, too fast. For example, if you convert to DNG and add one keyword to a folder of 1000 photos, ALL of those photos would be backed up again with Time Machine, whereas if I make that same keyword change to a folder of CR2 (Canon’s RAW format) photos, only the XMP files will register as new with Time Machine and be backed up, potentially saving massive amounts of backup drive space over time, not to mention the time it takes to perform those backups.