andy100 wrote:
[snip]
Thanks Avery, at least you seem to be on the same wavelength as me on this one !! – we pay a fortune for digital cameras, we pay a fortune for Photoshop, you’d have thought the least they would do would be to sort all the compatibility issues out beforehand, for free !!. Or at least say it was for the "S5000 Z ONLY (no other variations of 5xxx series !"
The camera manufacturers have made things even worse than that. "D70" and D70s" have to be treated as different cameras. But "350D" and "Rebel XT" sound like different cameras, yet they are actually the same. Raw converter developers have to waste a lot of resources trying to sort all of this out. All of these problems affect all of the raw-handling software suppliers – it isn’t specific to Adobe. Adobe just gets more complaints because they support more cameras (over 100) and probably more people use it. Not because they do things particularly differently.
No one gets told when they buy it that Photoshop (more precisely ACR) supports (say) the D200. Ditto for other raw converters. Perhaps people assume that it is like film – we used to assume that a Nikon and a Canon and a Fuji would take standard 35mm film and there is no need to check.
But, with raw, the camera manufacturers have changed the rules. They don’t appear to care much about the problems faced by their users as long as they can sell cameras – and normally they can, because many people buy them without checking first. Lots of software developers (perhaps 50 or more companies) have to play "catch-up" instead of doing what photographers really want, which is to develop better raw converters and viewers and asset management systems.
The camera manufacturers could, if they chose to, avoid causing this pain to their users. They could publish their raw formats. They could give advanced notice of them to the software developers. They could provide DNG as an option, and then those cameras would immediately be supported by raw converters with full support for DNG.
But they don’t. And they may not bother to do so until photographers recognise what the problem REALLY is, and start complaining to the camera manufacturers. The software developers can’t solve this problem. Only the camera manufacturers can. But who is telling them this?
—
Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/ http://www.birdsandanimals.info/