Lightroom does lossless compression on M9 files

[Stan Raucher]

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I managed to get a few shots at the M9 demo. I shot some dng uncompressed the files and they are 35,580 KB in size. When the files are imported to Lightroom 2.4, they undergo lossless compression (the same thing that happens with M8 dng files) and their size is reduced to 18 to 25 Mb depending on the image.

 

Stan

[t024484]

I managed to get a few shots at the M9 demo. I shot some dng uncompressed the files and they are 35,580 KB in size. When the files are imported to Lightroom 2.4, they undergo lossless compression (the same thing that happens with M8 dng files) and their size is reduced to 18 to 25 Mb depending on the image.

 

Stan

 

What exactly did you do. Have you converted the files into a TIFF using a LZW compression?

[luigi bertolotti]

Yes... detail exactly the process you did use, please.

[Stan Raucher]

Lightroom handles M9 files the same as M8 files. After you import a folder of M9 dng files into Lightroom, view the images in the folder in the Library grid mode (select the folder and hit the G on your keyboard), select all the files (ctrl A), and then go to the metadata menu and select "Update DNG Previews & Metadata" and Lighrtoom will do a lossless compression to the selected files. You'll see a progress bar in the upper left hand part of the window that says "Updating DNG Previews" and your files will be around 50%-70% of their original size.

 

Cheers,

 

Stan

[carstenw]

It is one of the import options in Lightroom, set in the upper-most drop-down list in the import dialog. I think it is called "Import as DNG". The fact that the Leica M8 and M9 already output DNG is ignored, the data is read, and compressed with Adobe's lossless scheme. For M8 images, they often go down to 5MB. I wish Lightroom could update them in place, but it will only do it upon import for DNGs. For other formats you can update them in place. I guess it gets confused due to the identical extension.