DNG Recover Edges & Intel Macs

[ho_co]

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I often use Thomas Knoll's DNG Recover Edges (DNG Recover Edges) on my PowerPC Mac, so I wonder:

 

Will DNG Recover Edges work on Intel-based Macs under OS X?

 

Anybody tried?

 

Thanks!

 

--HC

[DavidStone]

I often use Thomas Knoll's DNG Recover Edges (DNG Recover Edges) on my PowerPC Mac, so I wonder:

 

Will DNG Recover Edges work on Intel-based Macs under OS X?

 

Anybody tried?

 

Thanks!

 

--HC

 

Just downloaded and tried it on an iMac intel with OS10.4.10 and it tells me how many pixels have been recovered, but how do you tell if it's worked? What am I looking for?

 

David

[ho_co]

David--

Thanks for the response!

 

What it does is expose edge pixels that weren't shown when the camera created the DNG.

 

If you check the file's EXIF info after putting it through DNG Recover Edges, you'll see that the pixel count is greater than on the file before it went through Recover Edges. How much bigger depends on the particular camera. It only uncovers two pixels on each edge of an M8 file, for example, but on a Nikon D200 file it uncovers 14 pixels on each short side and 12 pixels on each long side.

 

I don't know what the behavior is with other products, but in Bridge no change is visible until after you've opened the extended file. When you first double-click the extended file, Bridge calls ACR and at first you see exactly what the non-extended file shows. Then just as ACR finishes loading it, the image magnification seems to diminish just a bit as the extra pixels appear on the screen.

 

Now if you go on and open the file in Photoshop, you'll have the full extended file as exposed by the camera. And when you go back and look at the file in Bridge, if you switch between the original and the expanded versions you'll see a very slight difference in magnification on screen: The extended file seems to shrink a bit as you open it, since it has more data around the edges.

 

I end up using DNG Recover Edges when I find that I cut just a little too closely on one edge, for example, and having just a little more data can give a better balance to my crop. I really should be more careful in framing to start with, but I'm a bit wobbly and even when I think I've got everything I need, there are times when I find out later that I want just a bit more. It isn't much help with the M8, but with the Digilux 2 and the D-Lux 2, and particularly with the D200, it just adds a bit of flexibility.

 

Thanks for letting me know it runs on the Intel iMac; I'm thinking of upgrading from my eMac, and I really didn't want to spring for Windows just to run this little utility.

 

Do tell me if there's anything else I can explain about how I use it. I've got no idea why the various manufacturers have such varying ideas on how much data to include in their DNGs or RAW files.

 

--HC

[DavidStone]

Aha! The M8 is my only DNG camera, so that's why I didn't see the difference. I'll hang on to the utility, however. You never know when these things might come in handy.

 

David