The future of the M line ?

[tom0511]

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How is DNG a standard if different DNGs from different cameras need different converters?

I have DNG from my DMR, from my M8 and from my Ricoh GRD, but besides the same three letters I dont see the simmularity?

[carstenw]

Not quite. There are converters and there are pseudo-converters.

- Capture One which is used by us Leica crowd, and Canon's DPP, and Adobe's Adobe Raw Converter Plugin for instance are simple converters. In a typical workflow they are used to generate TIFF images which are totally frozen, with known color references. These TIFF files can be used by zillions of different programs, they are perfectly documented.

- Aperture on the other hand, and I believe Lightroom too is more of a Raw database, viewer and editing program. it is used to work and style images in various versions (Aperture) or virtual copies (Lightroom).

 

Edmund, I don't quite understand your position here. Are you saying that C1 et al automatically create a TIFF on disk for every raw file you have?

 

If not, there is no advantage on either side, since it is a user-driven step, and Lightroom can certainly create TIFFs. These can even be added back into the database. This is how I manage shots I (want to) sell.

[mjh]

Not quite. There are converters and there are pseudo-converters.

- Capture One which is used by us Leica crowd, and Canon's DPP, and Adobe's Adobe Raw Converter Plugin for instance are simple converters. In a typical workflow they are used to generate TIFF images which are totally frozen, with known color references. These TIFF files can be used by zillions of different programs, they are perfectly documented.

- Aperture on the other hand, and I believe Lightroom too is more of a Raw database, viewer and editing program. it is used to work and style images in various versions (Aperture) or virtual copies (Lightroom).

There is no such difference. Lightroom and Aperture both convert raw files to TIFFs or JPEGs, just like the other applications you mentioned. They also store conversion settings, so you don’t need to start from scratch if you want to repeat the conversion, but change, say, a single parameter. Again, this is what most raw converters do. There is nothing special about Lightroom and Aperture, except that they do much more than just raw conversion.

 

The only way the user can escape from this situation is by meticulously exporting each valuable version of a file to a TIFF.

Of course – that’s what raw conversion is about: converting a raw file to a TIFF, JPEG, or whatever.

[mjh]

How is DNG a standard if different DNGs from different cameras need different converters?

It is a standard insofar as there is a specification of the DNG format and every DNG file conforms to that specification.

 

I have DNG from my DMR, from my M8 and from my Ricoh GRD, but besides the same three letters I dont see the simmularity?

Anyone developing a raw converter will see the similarity. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t variants – DNG is a highly flexible format and different camera manufacturers use it in different ways. Even the DMR stores raw data differently from the M8, but still, raw files from the DMR and the M8 both conform to the DNG standard. It is not true that different variants of DNG need different converters – you could use the same converter for the DMR and the M8 –, but raw converters need to be adapted to new cameras on the market, which may take some time (weeks or months at worst).

[sandymc]

At the end of the day, there are only two way to edit an image, either destructively at the pixel level, or keeping the image in its original form, and storing a set of instructions on how to change it. Lightroom is the latter.

 

And it not true to say to Lightroom's format for storing instructions isn't open. You can store the setting you used on any image as a preset. That preset is stored in XML, which any text editor can read, and Abobe have chosen field names that map directly to controls in Lightroom. E.g., an extract from a preset file:

 

Contrast = 0,

ConvertToGrayscale = true,

Exposure = 0,

FillLight = 0,

HighlightRecovery = 0,

 

So its entirely possible for someone to write a little utility that converts from e.g., Lightroom presets to C1 presets.

 

This site has a lot more on the format of Lightroom preset files: Inside Lightroom

 

Sandy

[mwalker649]

This site has a lot more on the format of Lightroom preset files: Inside Lightroom

 

Sandy

 

Thanks Sandy, Thats a good site.

[sdai]

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The point is not about how Adobe set up the DNG standard, as Michael has pointed out, there're areas in the DNG format reserved for proprietary information too, it's correct that everyone who knows how to use a text editor can read the information in the meta data area.

 

However, from the camera manufacturers' perspective, exposing every data under the sun is simply a bad thing, and it's no different from opening a can of worms and let everyone compete against them, that's why Nikon wanted to lock up the AWB data and others may want to lock up the areas containing information such as lens aberration correction, vignetting correction, distortion correction etc.

 

Canon and Nikon chose to ignore DNG for two good reasons (to them):

 

1. There's no technical advantage to gain;

2. There's no business advantage to gain.

 

Any business is out there to make money ...