DIGITAL CORNER
Digital Corner: Digital Negatives
When we moved to digital SLR’s we were confronted with the dilemma of which format to use for recording our images. There was JPEG and RAW or a combination of both. Many of us shoot just RAW and use post processing software to import and view the RAW images. We then export other file formats, like JPEG or TIF! Now we have yet another format to consider - digital negative which shows up in our computer as a .dng file.
Why has the digital negative come to be? The main reason is that every camera maker has developed their own RAW file format. A Nikon RAW file is different from a Canon RAW file and both are different from any other camera maker’s RAW format. Combine that with the distinct possibility that as we move forward, even within a brand, RAW formats will change. As time goes on and more features are introduced on cameras, the companies will drop support for older formats. Camera manufacturers do supply software with the products that allow us to view and do some manipulation of the captured RAW files but most photographers use the standard software tools like Photoshop and Lightroom. These programs are very capable of reading individual RAW files from all of the different cameras---today! What about tomorrow? When Photoshop CS12 comes out in 2015 (I’m being a little facetious here) will it still support today’s RAW images? Probably not, especially if the camera companies have dropped support for that particular format. Adobe will only provide internal software for supported formats; they can’t afford to maintain software with obsolete versions.
What are the options? First of all, you can stop shooting RAW and do only JPEG. That will limit you as RAW has many advantages over JPEG. That’s a topic for another column. Alternatively you can use one of the software tools you have to save your images as .dng (Digital Negative) files. Adobe products all provide that capability as do several other tools.
The whole premise behind digital negatives is that it’s an open standard developed by Adobe that allows image files to be saved with all of the data that is captured by RAW. The key difference is that while all RAW formats are proprietary to individual camera companies, digital negative is a public (open) format. Open formats allow software developers full access to the information. As new camera RAW formats come out, software products will be able to read the new format and create the .dng files right away. The only requirement is that the RAW formats comply with the digital negative format requirements. I can’t imagine any camera manufacturer not doing that. It would be such a competitive disadvantage that the products would not sell well at all.
So, is it time to panic and spend the next 3 weeks converting all of your RAW files to .dng? No, not really but you may want to consider altering your workflow to include copies of your images in .dng. You can then periodically convert your best images as time permits. It’s only when you upgrade your image processing software that you may eventually have a problem.