dng vs. cr3 (Page 2): SO much to learn and so few hours in a day. Thank you everyone!

Sam9987

SO much to learn and so few hours in a day. Thank you everyone!

coullone Loc: Paynesville, Victoria, Australia

berchman wrote:

The benefit is a smaller file without loss and a universal standard.

Not with NEF , ORF or Pentax. The DNG is simular to Tiff in size. DNG is not a universal standard, it may be an Adobe standard. Tiff is the only 'universal' standard and has been for decades.
I converted all my TAGA files back in the early 90's, they were considered very large at over 2 Mb each but the quality was the best available at that time. Ran the camera on a NEC APC IV Powermate, The TAGA card cost over $4000 and took about 20 seconds to process each image. It had seperate cables for Red, Green and Blue so only a few early cameras would work. I used a JVC movie camera modified to capture single frames.
Just looked for an example and found I cannot read the CD! The Kodak one with the 100 year life warrentee!
Now need to check all my early CD's and hope this is a once off!
Every backup system is forever - NOT

At least I am 40 km from East Gippsland bush fires but the smoke means visability down to 1km or less

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

coullone wrote:

The DNG is simular to Tiff in size.

As one who has been into digital photography since 1994, I can tell you definitively that DNG is nowhere near similar in size to TIFF.

Bill_de Loc: US

russelray wrote:

As one who has been into digital photography since 1994, I can tell you definitively that DNG is nowhere near similar in size to TIFF.

There is an option to save the original within the DNG. If that option is selected, knowingly or by accident, you can get a very large DNG file.

The only downside to converting to DNG is that it strips out proprietary information that Adobe products don't recognize. If you only use Adobe products it is no loss. The camera manufacturer's, and possibly some third party, software uses this information. Adobe basically treats all raw formats as a DNG.

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DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

russelray wrote:

And one will never lose a side car file!

The side car files contain the edit commands.
The dng files contain the edit commands.

If you edit a raw file you should back up the sidecar files after every edit.
If you edit a dng file you should back up the dng file after every edit.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Bill_de wrote:

...The only downside to converting to DNG is that it strips out proprietary information that Adobe products don't recognize. If you only use Adobe products it is no loss. The camera manufacturer's, and possibly some third party, software uses this information. Adobe basically treats all raw formats as a DNG.

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A few years back I was thinking about whether it was worth converting to dng. I use Adobe software.
I did some reading on the internet and collected opinions from various sites. I wrote them up at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1419. There are both pros and cons to dng. I tried to point them out in the writeup. I also tried to separate my conclusions from the opinions presented in the various sites. Note that this writeup is several years old and I have not pursued the study. However, I don't believe there have been any advances in the dng technology. I believe that would be news that I would hear about in the various forums I frequent.

Basically, my conclusion was that as long as my software reads the original raw file, I saw no advantage to converting to dng. YMMV.

Bill_de Loc: US

DirtFarmer wrote:

A few years back I was thinking about whether it w... (show quote)

I'm not an advocate for dng, but it came in handy when Adobe included new cameras before getting them into their major programs. I think the last major 'advance' was the ability to save the original file within the dng container. That of course defeated the idea of a smaller file size. Probably the biggest miscalculation Adobe ever made, besides not buying Photoshop when it was first offered to them, was thinking they could get the major camera manufacturers to all switch to dng.

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MichaelH Loc: NorCal via Lansing, MI

Bill_de wrote:

I'm not an advocate for dng, but it came in handy when Adobe included new cameras before getting them into their major programs. I think the last major 'advance' was the ability to save the original file within the dng container. That of course defeated the idea of a smaller file size. Probably the biggest miscalculation Adobe ever made, besides not buying Photoshop when it was first offered to them, was thinking they could get the major camera manufacturers to all switch to dng.

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Photoshop was "invented" in 1987 by two brothers Thomas and John Knoll. Adobe purchased the license to distribute Photoshop in September 1988. Photoshop 1.0 was released by Adobe on February 19, 1990 for Macintosh. And then Adobe ported it to Windows in 1993.

Apple had an opportunity to buy Photoshop at the same time as Adobe but didn't. (Summarized from WikiPedia.)

philo Loc: philo, ca

Bill_de wrote:

There is an option to save the original within the DNG. If that option is selected, knowingly or by accident, you can get a very large DNG file.

The only downside to converting to DNG is that it strips out proprietary information that Adobe products don't recognize. If you only use Adobe products it is no loss. The camera manufacturer's, and possibly some third party, software uses this information. Adobe basically treats all raw formats as a DNG.

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My Adpbe does not treat all raw format as DNG. When I import my raw files into Bridge from my Mark 4 they are converted to dng (i checked the box); however when i do the same with my eos R they are converted to CR3.

Bill_de Loc: US

philo wrote:

My Adpbe does not treat all raw format as DNG. When I import my raw files into Bridge from my Mark 4 they are converted to dng (i checked the box); however when i do the same with my eos R they are converted to CR3.

I said treats like, not converts to. If you edited the CR3 in Canon specific software there should be more information available to the program. That's the proprietary information that Adobe ignores. It would be quite a feat for Adobe to deal with every little quirk included it the file from every available camera.

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DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

If you use LR, the raw files stay in their original format. If you use the panorama or HDR features of LR, the resulting files will be dng.

Not quite sure what "treats like dng" means.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

Bill_de wrote:

There is an option to save the original within the DNG. If that option is selected, knowingly or by accident, you can get a very large DNG file.

The only downside to converting to DNG is that it strips out proprietary information that Adobe products don't recognize. If you only use Adobe products it is no loss. The camera manufacturer's, and possibly some third party, software uses this information. Adobe basically treats all raw formats as a DNG.

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I have not been able to select that option by accident. There are a lot of options, but to summarily say that DNG file size is similar to TIFF file size simply is wrong.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

DirtFarmer wrote:

The side car files contain the edit commands.
The dng files contain the edit commands.

If you edit a raw file you should back up the sidecar files after every edit.
If you edit a dng file you should back up the dng file after every edit.

Having working in the computer industry since 1977, I am of the considered opinion that you should back up all your file, edited or not.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

russelray wrote:

Having working in the computer industry since 1977, I am of the considered opinion that you should back up all your file, edited or not.

I certainly agree with that. But my point was that if you edit an image, any backups you have done previously are now out of date and you should back up your file again. Back up after every edit.

Don't treat a dng as a raw file. A raw file is not changed by editing so you don't have to back it up after you do some edits. A dng file is changed after editing so it should be backed up again.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

DirtFarmer wrote:

I certainly agree with that. But my point was that if you edit an image, any backups you have done previously are now out of date and you should back up your file again. Back up after every edit.

Don't treat a dng as a raw file. A raw file is not changed by editing so you don't have to back it up after you do some edits. A dng file is changed after editing so it should be backed up again.

However, what you are calling a raw file has a sidecar that IS changed after editing, so not only should you back up the sidecar file, you should back up what you are calling the raw file so that the two don't get divorced. With a DNG RAW file, one will never lose track of a sidecar file because there isn't one.