RAW converters available.

D
Posted By
drjchamberlain
Jun 15, 2005
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752
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Dear members:

Knowing that Photoshop CS’s Camera Raw is probably (in fact almost certainly) the best RAW file converter available today, I would like to read your opinions and suggestions on other RAW converters available as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

I would appreciate if you could mention all RAW converters that you know and give your input on how good they are and how they stack up against Camera Raw.

Thank you in advance for your help.


Dr. Joseph Chamberlain, D.D.S.
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

How to Improve Photoshop Performance

Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!

BH
Bill Hilton
Jun 15, 2005
Dr. Joseph Chamberlain, D.D.S.

Knowing that Photoshop CS’s Camera Raw is probably (in fact almost certainly) the best RAW file converter available today

It’s convenient but few would call it the "best".

I would like to read your opinions and suggestions on other RAW converters available as well as their advantages and disadvantages. I would appreciate if you could mention all RAW converters that you know and give your input on how good they are and how they stack up against Camera Raw.

You should run tests yourself, I feel, converting a handful of ‘typical’ images for the way you shoot and carefully comparing results. The four I would (and did) test are the one that comes with your camera, CS RAW, Capture One 3.7 and RSE (RawShooter Essentials … written by the same guy who did Capture One).

I would suggest converting each image with default settings and then convert a second time by adjusting fully for color, tonality and sharpness with each converter.

I looked for four things when I ran my tests … first, how easy or hard was it to sort thru a large number of files quickly, since I have an 8 fps camera and an itchy trigger finger (CS RAW and the Canon software I used were poor at this, the other two were much better for my personal workflow). Then look at the colors … how hard is it to get really good colors with that converter? Are default colors blah? Some of them have better profiles or tone curves for certain cameras and poor ones for other cameras so it depends to some extent on your camera model, but for the Canon Pro bodies I use (1D MII and 1Ds) I thought CO and RSE were clearly better. Next look at the degree of sharpness in finely detailed areas and look at the smoothness in out of focus areas or something like skin tones … I like to blow the file up to 400% to check this and again I think CO does a better job of demosaicing that CS RAW, especially in the smooth areas. Note you can vary the sharpness settings in the various converters so it’s easy to get mislead here (RSE for example has higher default sharpening than the others so looks crisper, but you can get similar results from the others by adding sharpening). There may be other criteria that are important to you that tilt in favor of CS RAW though.

Anyway, those are the four things I look for (workflow, color, detail, clean demosaicing) … depending on your camera and on your preferred workflow you might come to different conclusions but I rate CS RAW 3rd overall between these four converters. You can download CO trial versions (30 days for Pro, 15 more days for LE) to try it out and right now the beta RSE is free, but it will occasionally lock up the part of the screen that shows the Folders so it’s a pain to use. CS RAW has some nice touches and for some things it is better than the others (for example neither RSE nor CO give a correct exposure with ISO 50 on my Canon cameras) and I use the Canon software to do things like look at the exact focus point (which none of the others will show) but for everyday work I use the other two right now. YMMV but check it for yourself.

Bill
CW
C Wright
Jun 15, 2005
On 6/15/05 11:12 AM, in article
, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

You should run tests yourself, I feel, converting a handful of ‘typical’ images for the way you shoot and carefully comparing results. The four I would (and did) test are the one that comes with your camera, CS RAW, Capture One 3.7 and RSE (RawShooter Essentials … written by the same guy who did Capture One).

I would suggest converting each image with default settings and then convert a second time by adjusting fully for color, tonality and sharpness with each converter.

I looked for four things when I ran my tests … first, how easy or hard was it to sort thru a large number of files quickly, since I have an 8 fps camera and an itchy trigger finger (CS RAW and the Canon software I used were poor at this, the other two were much better for my personal workflow). Then look at the colors … how hard is it to get really good colors with that converter? Are default colors blah? Some of them have better profiles or tone curves for certain cameras and poor ones for other cameras so it depends to some extent on your camera model, but for the Canon Pro bodies I use (1D MII and 1Ds) I thought CO and RSE were clearly better. Next look at the degree of sharpness in finely detailed areas and look at the smoothness in out of focus areas or something like skin tones … I like to blow the file up to 400% to check this and again I think CO does a better job of demosaicing that CS RAW, especially in the smooth areas. Note you can vary the sharpness settings in the various converters so it’s easy to get mislead here (RSE for example has higher default sharpening than the others so looks crisper, but you can get similar results from the others by adding sharpening). There may be other criteria that are important to you that tilt in favor of CS RAW though.

Anyway, those are the four things I look for (workflow, color, detail, clean demosaicing) …
snip
Bill
Bill – Just a curiosity question. When you mention the CS raw converter I assume that you are talking about CS and not CS2. Have you tried the converter in CS2 relative to your criteria? That converter, now associated more with the Bridge rather than PS itself, seems a lot more capable relative to work flow and default color correction.

Another converter the OP might try is Bibble:
http://www.bibblelabs.com/
Chuck
BH
Bill Hilton
Jun 15, 2005
Bill – Just a curiosity question. When you mention the CS raw converter I assume that you are talking about CS and not CS2.

That’s right, I haven’t upgraded yet to CS2. I’ve bought every other upgrade since 4.0 but can’t decide if there are any reasons to get this one.

Have you tried the converter in CS2 relative to your criteria?

No, I haven’t.

That converter, now associated more with the Bridge rather than PS itself, seems a lot more capable
relative to work flow and default color correction.

Could very well be … I heard the workflow was improved but the conversion algorithms were pretty much unchanged, but that was just hearsay. Bruce Fraser has some excellent workflow tips for CS RAW via the File Browser in his book, which I’ve tried, but it was still much easier to just wait for the previews to be generated in the other programs and then have access to all images quickly, compared to CS RAW, I feel.

Couple of other things to mention in favor of CS RAW are that Adobe supports new cameras with a new RAW plugin while Capture One (and I assume RSE … it hasn’t been out that long) generally require that you upgrade to a new version to get new camera support, and at least with the Canon 20D on Windows they were very slow in adding that support. People waited about four months to get 20D support, for example (supposedly because they were rewriting the Win code and the key guy quit to startup RSE, but still it was very unprofessional…)

Also, I recently had a couple of images that showed a lot of moire in Capture One but less with CS RAW. I may be able to change settings in CO to lessen this but at default settings for noise suppression etc CS RAW was definitely better … here’s an example …
http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/quail_moire.jpg … I’ve only seen this in one set of images out of probably 15,000 frames but if you shoot a lot of fabric type shots it might be a concern.

Bill
H
Hannah
Jun 15, 2005
"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote in message
Dear members:

Knowing that Photoshop CS’s Camera Raw is probably (in fact almost certainly) the best RAW file converter available today

In fact it is almost certainly, nay definitely, NOT the best RAW converter, and that’s by far, and I wonder why you think it is. I think you’ll find that the participants in the battle will be Capture One (various versions, but notably Pro), and the excellent and still totally free Rawshooter Essentials. In my book, speaking as a busy pro photographer using digital about 90% of the time, and always RAW for those, I put any of Adobe’s RAW converters several places down the list, and put Rawshooter right at the top, several quality settings above what I once thought was the unbeatable C1 Pro.

Sorry to pop your abscess.

Hannah.
H
Hecate
Jun 15, 2005
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:43:38 +0100, "Hannah"
wrote:

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote in message
Dear members:

Knowing that Photoshop CS’s Camera Raw is probably (in fact almost certainly) the best RAW file converter available today

In fact it is almost certainly, nay definitely, NOT the best RAW converter, and that’s by far, and I wonder why you think it is. I think you’ll find that the participants in the battle will be Capture One (various versions, but notably Pro), and the excellent and still totally free Rawshooter Essentials. In my book, speaking as a busy pro photographer using digital about 90% of the time, and always RAW for those, I put any of Adobe’s RAW converters several places down the list, and put Rawshooter right at the top, several quality settings above what I once thought was the unbeatable C1 Pro.
That’s interesting. I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother. I had thought that C1 Pro was the best, but as you’ve had experience with it..



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
BP
Barry Pearson
Jun 16, 2005
Bill Hilton wrote:
[snip]
That’s right, I haven’t upgraded yet to CS2. I’ve bought every other upgrade since 4.0 but can’t decide if there are any reasons to get this one.
[snip]
Could very well be … I heard the workflow was improved but the conversion algorithms were pretty much unchanged, but that was just hearsay. Bruce Fraser has some excellent workflow tips for CS RAW via the File Browser in his book, which I’ve tried, but it was still much easier to just wait for the previews to be generated in the other programs and then have access to all images quickly, compared to CS RAW, I feel.

As far as I can tell, the number-crunching is the same. I appear to get the same results from the same images if the settings are the same. (But I haven’t done a precise test).

But there are extra settings and adjustments available before you do the conversion, which obviously change the conversion if you use them. It depends on whether you would use them or not. For example: non-destructive align, crop, and curves. Plus extra eye-dropper colour-sampling that records RGBs at labelled places in the preview. And default ("Auto") settings for some of the sliders, which some like, and some hate so much they switch them off!

Some will like, and some will hate, the fact that ACR 3.1 under CS2 can save as DNG, and indeed can save its settings and adjustments as metadata within that DNG file. So you end up with a single file holding the original sensor data plus about 20 or 30 values set in ACR. The metadata is non-destructive – for example, "crop" doesn’t throw away any sensor data, and is easily cleared.

I think previews are a bit better with DNG, because of larger embedded JPEGs. Hm! These paragraphs are saying that some (but not all) of the improvements assume DNG, and since some people don’t want to go down that route, they won’t get as much from CS2. It is very personal.

Couple of other things to mention in favor of CS RAW are that Adobe supports new cameras with a new RAW plugin while Capture One (and I assume RSE … it hasn’t been out that long) generally require that you upgrade to a new version to get new camera support, and at least with the Canon 20D on Windows they were very slow in adding that support. People waited about four months to get 20D support, for example (supposedly because they were rewriting the Win code and the key guy quit to startup RSE, but still it was very unprofessional…)

[snip]

And, of course, when Adobe release support for new cameras via a new plug-in, they also do so in a new DNG Converter. And then ACR 2.4 in Photoshop CS can cater for those new cameras via DNG without needing an upgrade to CS!

So ACR 2.4 / CS supports (via DNG) the D2X, 350D, D70s, a couple of recent Olympus cameras, and the new Leica digital back – the latter DNG straight out of the camera without needing conversion.


Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.birdsandanimals.info/
H
Hannah
Jun 16, 2005
"Hecate" wrote in message
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:43:38 +0100, "Hannah"
wrote:

That’s interesting. I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother. I had thought that C1 Pro was the best, but as you’ve had experience with it..
Get the C1P free trial (15 days worth I think) and compare these: colour, detail, contrast and the ability to get detail out of the shadows. I rest my case.
Hannah.
H
Hecate
Jun 16, 2005
On 16 Jun 2005 04:40:26 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:

So ACR 2.4 / CS supports (via DNG) the D2X, 350D, D70s, a couple of recent Olympus cameras, and the new Leica digital back – the latter DNG straight out of the camera without needing conversion.

Yeah, the problem is when you don’t want use their bl**dy DNG. 😉

Thank goodness for Rawshooter 🙂



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
H
Hecate
Jun 16, 2005
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:12:55 +0100, "Hannah"
wrote:

"Hecate" wrote in message
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:43:38 +0100, "Hannah"
wrote:

That’s interesting. I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother. I had thought that C1 Pro was the best, but as you’ve had experience with it..
Get the C1P free trial (15 days worth I think) and compare these: colour, detail, contrast and the ability to get detail out of the shadows. I rest my case.
Hannah.
Thanks, I’ll do that.



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
BP
Barry Pearson
Jun 16, 2005
Hecate wrote:
On 16 Jun 2005 04:40:26 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:

So ACR 2.4 / CS supports (via DNG) the D2X, 350D, D70s, a couple of recent Olympus cameras, and the new Leica digital back – the latter DNG straight out of the camera without needing conversion.

Yeah, the problem is when you don’t want use their bl**dy DNG. 😉
Thank goodness for Rawshooter 🙂

Some Rawshooter users might not have agreed with you a little while ago! There has been a long-running thread in the pixmantec forums about the failure of RSE to support the DNG files from the Leica DMR digital back. Here is Michael Tapes’ constructive summary, with selected quotes below:

http://forum.pixmantec.com/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/641 3/page/0/vc/1

Equivalent: http://tinyurl.com/82wyp

– The DMR DNG file is a "real" RAW file

– RS is planned to support the DMR in a future version

– DNG is a real RAW format

– DNG is an extendable format that serves a good purpose in the market place.

– Pixmantec applauds the efforts of Adobe in regards to DNG, and is in communications in this regard.

Dave Coffin’s DCRaw supports the Leica Raw files without problems, because it supports DNG. Ditto ACR 2.4 and later versions. RSE ran into problems with the Leica and its users because it doesn’t (yet) support DNG unconditionally.

DNG has crossed-over from being "just" an Adobe specification to being a real Raw format from a real camera. In fact, as far as I know, that Leica is the first digital camera to have an openly-specified freely-licensed Raw format.

ps: the software packed with the Leica DMR back, to handle its Raw, TIFF, and JPEG files, is Photoshop Elements 3.0.


Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.birdsandanimals.info/
BH
Bill Hilton
Jun 17, 2005
Hecate wrote …

I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been
thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother.

I think you should still try it out, for many images I prefer C1 to RSE due to the colors. Here are at least three advantages C1 has … RSE has a tendency to not refresh the screen properly if you’re changing the window while an image is resizing, which pushes the Folders window up under the menu bar so you can’t reach all your files. The "fix" for this is to uninstall, delete all the RSE folders and edit your registry, then re-install, which seems a bit extreme for a simple screen refresh. Also, C1 has a wider range of color tones available for many cameras (especially the Canon Pro models I’m using) … when RSE’s profile is ‘right’ for your image it’s great but change the tone curves in the ‘appearance’ tab and you’ll see some weird looking colors. In particular the Magne Nielsen profiles are excellent, and support for the Canon 1Ds includes five different custom skin tones, for example. RSE has nothing like this (yet). Also, C1 shows a lot more of the EXIF data than RSE, which I rely on. For example, the aggregate # of total shutter actuations is shown for the Canon Pro models and C1 … with RSE you get very little EXIF info beyond the basic ISO, aperture, shutter speed and focal length data.

So it’s worth trying C1 out … you can try Pro for 30 days and LE for 15 days, no restrictions … the conversion quality is identical for the two versions but Pro offers tethering, arbitrary rotation, resizing, allows for custom curve creation, and has CMYK support (no doubt I’ve left off a few other features but those are the main ones I remember). I think people with Photoshop are mainly profiting from tethered operation but you’re paying closer to $500 (Pro) than $100 (LE) and to most it’s not worth it.

Note that RSE has very aggressive sharpening and saturation defaults, which makes the images ‘pop’ at default settings but you can get the same thing with C1 or CS RAW if you wish … for example, someone tested and found that the default sharpness settings for RSE are matched by these settings: Set CO sharpening to amount 18, radius 3, Noise reduction slider in preferences set to the least amount. In CS2 apply the noise reduction filter with all noise reduction sliders set to 0 (zero) and detail sharpening set to ~60. These give the same sharpness as the default RSE settings.

Here’s a list of RSE features that I feel are superior to what C1 has to offer (cut/paste from an email to C1 when C1 asked for suggestions for their next revision) … YMMV as to what’s important to your workflow, but despite these ‘nice to haves’ I still use C1 a lot too ….

1) Snapshots let you freeze the image at any given group of settings, then make more changes and take another snapshot etc. By clicking a tab you can then display the original vs the changed preview at any point you’ve saved off. C1 has nothing like this and it’s very handy.

2) I’m not a fan of auto-anything but the auto exposure does a good job

of getting you real close real fast, at least on the images I tried it on.

3) With C1 you get clean previews at 25% or 100% (after a delay while the preview is regenerated) but not at the intermediate views (50 or 75%). With RSE you get clean non-pixelated previews at any %, just like with ACR. Nice. Big advantage to RSE.

4) "Fill Light" works like the shadow part of Photoshop’s Shadow/Highlight tool and there is no comparable tool in C1.

5) The preview files are less than half the size of the C1 preview files, which is a big deal to me when traveling and checking several thousand files on a laptop.

Just my thoughts after using both programs quite a bit … I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as Hannah does and I still use both programs.

Bill
N
nomail
Jun 17, 2005
Bill Hilton wrote:

Note that RSE has very aggressive sharpening and saturation defaults, which makes the images ‘pop’ at default settings but you can get the same thing with C1 or CS RAW if you wish … for example, someone tested and found that the default sharpness settings for RSE are matched by these settings: Set CO sharpening to amount 18, radius 3, Noise reduction slider in preferences set to the least amount.

Huh? CO (if that means CaptureOne) doesn’t have a radius setting for its sharpening. You can set Amount, Method and Threshold.

4) "Fill Light" works like the shadow part of Photoshop’s Shadow/Highlight tool and there is no comparable tool in C1.

But C1 has curves, which is missing in RSE. With curves you can set your own ‘fill light’, but with more control.


Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/
BH
Bill Hilton
Jun 17, 2005
Set CO sharpening to amount 18, radius 3

Johan W. Elzenga writes …

Huh? CO (if that means CaptureOne) doesn’t have a radius setting for its sharpening.

You’re right, should have been ‘threshold 3’ …

Bill
H
Hecate
Jun 18, 2005
On 16 Jun 2005 16:30:35 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:

Yeah, the problem is when you don’t want use their bl**dy DNG. 😉
Thank goodness for Rawshooter 🙂

Some Rawshooter users might not have agreed with you a little while ago! There has been a long-running thread in the pixmantec forums about the failure of RSE to support the DNG files from the Leica DMR digital back. Here is Michael Tapes’ constructive summary, with selected quotes below:
As I, personally, couldn’t give a monkey’s about DNG, my reaction is, of course. How sad. Now move on. 🙂



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
H
Hecate
Jun 18, 2005
On 16 Jun 2005 17:09:09 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Hecate wrote …

I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been
thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother.
<snip>

Just my thoughts after using both programs quite a bit … I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as Hannah does and I still use both programs.
Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Bill. I can see I’m going to have to take a bit of time to compare these two.

I’m going to go out and deliberately shoot some images which I can run though both for comparison and see what I like.



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
C
Clifford
Jun 18, 2005
Hi

It is a pity that Rawshooter is not available for a MAC. Are there any Raw Converters other Adobe that will work on a Mac?

Cheers

On 15/6/05 10:32 pm, in article ,
"Hecate" wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 21:43:38 +0100, "Hannah"
wrote:

"Joseph Chamberlain, DDS" wrote in message
Dear members:

Knowing that Photoshop CS’s Camera Raw is probably (in fact almost certainly) the best RAW file converter available today

In fact it is almost certainly, nay definitely, NOT the best RAW converter, and that’s by far, and I wonder why you think it is. I think you’ll find that the participants in the battle will be Capture One (various versions, but notably Pro), and the excellent and still totally free Rawshooter Essentials. In my book, speaking as a busy pro photographer using digital about 90% of the time, and always RAW for those, I put any of Adobe’s RAW converters several places down the list, and put Rawshooter right at the top, several quality settings above what I once thought was the unbeatable C1 Pro.
That’s interesting. I’ve just started to use Rawshooter and I had been thinking about trying out C1 Pro. Now I probably won’t bother. I had thought that C1 Pro was the best, but as you’ve had experience with it..



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
CW
C Wright
Jun 18, 2005
On 6/18/05 11:18 AM, in article BEDA0868.924C%,
"Clifford" wrote:

Hi

It is a pity that Rawshooter is not available for a MAC. Are there any Raw Converters other Adobe that will work on a Mac?

Cheers
C1 works on a Mac and Bibble works on a Mac. Also, if you use Canon equipment their raw converter works on a Mac. I don’t have any experience with Nikon’s converter but I expect that it works on Mac as well.
BH
Bill Hilton
Jun 18, 2005
Clifford writes …

Are there any Raw Converters other Adobe that will work on a Mac?

Capture One 3.7 has a Mac version … actually, there are more features in the Mac version than in the PC version, to the chagrin of many of us 🙂 You can download 3.7 Pro for a free 30 day trial and then 3.7 LE for a free 15 day trial to check it out.

Bill
BP
Barry Pearson
Jun 20, 2005
Hecate wrote:
On 16 Jun 2005 16:30:35 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:
[snip]
Some Rawshooter users might not have agreed with you a little while ago! There has been a long-running thread in the pixmantec forums about the failure of RSE to support the DNG files from the Leica DMR digital back. Here is Michael Tapes’ constructive summary, with selected quotes below:
As I, personally, couldn’t give a monkey’s about DNG, my reaction is, of course. How sad. Now move on. 🙂

I have moved on. I thought you were the one having problems moving on. I suspect you will be using DNG within 5 years. We’ll see.


Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.birdsandanimals.info/
H
Hecate
Jun 21, 2005
On 20 Jun 2005 09:48:37 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:

Hecate wrote:
On 16 Jun 2005 16:30:35 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:
[snip]
Some Rawshooter users might not have agreed with you a little while ago! There has been a long-running thread in the pixmantec forums about the failure of RSE to support the DNG files from the Leica DMR digital back. Here is Michael Tapes’ constructive summary, with selected quotes below:
As I, personally, couldn’t give a monkey’s about DNG, my reaction is, of course. How sad. Now move on. 🙂

I have moved on. I thought you were the one having problems moving on. I suspect you will be using DNG within 5 years. We’ll see.

Not unless it’s adopted by every camera manufacturer and becomes a standard that replaces different RAW files altogether. And the chances of that ar4e…?



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…
BP
Barry Pearson
Jun 21, 2005
Hecate wrote:
On 20 Jun 2005 09:48:37 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:
Hecate wrote:
[snip]
As I, personally, couldn’t give a monkey’s about DNG, my reaction is, of course. How sad. Now move on. 🙂

I have moved on. I thought you were the one having problems moving on. I suspect you will be using DNG within 5 years. We’ll see.

Not unless it’s adopted by every camera manufacturer and becomes a standard that replaces different RAW files altogether. And the chances of that ar4e…?

Some might think that is a bit extreme!

I believe the vast majority of Raw-shooting photographers would, at the latest, adopt DNG if THEIR cameras output DNG. (Whatever other cameras did, and certainly whatever other camera manufacturers did).

I believe most Raw-shooting photographers would adopt DNG, even if their cameras didn’t output DNG, if all the tools they, and the people who use their photographs, used, accepted DNG as input.

"Every" and "altogether" are irrelevant and unnecessary to most people.

I think what cameras output is the single LEAST important criterion for use of DNG. My camera doesn’t output DNG, but I have been using it for over 8 months. The same applies to nearly all the other photographers who use DNG. (Users of the Leica DMR digital back are in a different category).

We shouldn’t let ourselves be constrained by our cameras, where we don’t have to. What is more important is what our other tools do, and what our users/customers do.


Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/
http://www.birdsandanimals.info/
H
Hecate
Jun 21, 2005
On 21 Jun 2005 11:06:03 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:

Hecate wrote:
On 20 Jun 2005 09:48:37 -0700, "Barry Pearson" wrote:
Hecate wrote:
[snip]
As I, personally, couldn’t give a monkey’s about DNG, my reaction is, of course. How sad. Now move on. 🙂

I have moved on. I thought you were the one having problems moving on. I suspect you will be using DNG within 5 years. We’ll see.

Not unless it’s adopted by every camera manufacturer and becomes a standard that replaces different RAW files altogether. And the chances of that ar4e…?

Some might think that is a bit extreme!
If you have to work in a commercial environment, with different camera types, and your time is worth money, wasting time converting x number of camera RAW files to DNG just so you can say "Hey, cool dude, all my images are in DNG" isn’t a sensible option. Unless, as I said, and will keep on saying, it’s a standard used in all cameras and therefore saves me time, and makes my life easier, then the "standard" (which isn’t) is not even going to be worth the paper it isn’t written on.



Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

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