Digital Negative (DNG) vs Canon Raw 2 (CR2)

What are the advantages to using DNG format as opposed to CR2? Do

you lose any detail or latitude by coverting to DNG?

 

Thanks!

Hi Aaron, As I understand it, right now there's little reason to use Adobe's DNG format because no major player has yet signed on to adopt it. The rationale for having a standard RAW format is a good one - we wouldn't need all these different RAW converters, and Adobe wouldn't have to update their software every other week as new cameras come out. I'm not aware that DNG is technically superior to any other proprietary format though. Perhaps I'll be corrected on that! Again, as I understand it, the only reason to convert your existing RAW files to DNG is if and when it's widely adopted (mostly by Canon and Nikon) as a standard. We'll have to wait and see if that happens at all. Good luck!

DNG is a proposed standard format for RAW images, but until its accepted by the major players I would not use it. If you do and it is not accepted by the major players, you may be one of the few with DNG files.

The advantage is that anyone can find out how to read (and write) DNG files because

the format is publicly disclosed (but still owned by Adobe, BTW). So, in principle, even

if none of the major companies support it, it's still possible for you or someone else

to write software that works with it. All you need is some programming skills and

knowledge about colors, etc. (And even if you don't know much about the latter, you

can still recover the picture, although it might not be a high-quality rendition.) That's

not the case with proprietary formats like CR2, which are only understood by their

owners and a few 3rd party vendors -- at least legally. For this reason, it's not a bad

idea to keep a copy of your images in DNG in addition to the original. Consider it a

second backup for the raw files you really want to keep.

 

I don't believe you would lose any of the actual image data. However, whether your

DNG raw converter happens to be as capable as your CR2 raw converter is another

question. But at least the data is there.

 

You might lose some proprietary metadata if Adobe's DNG converter doesn't deem it

important (i.e., not used by Adobe software), though. That's just my guess.

<blockquote><em>

The rationale for having a standard RAW format is a good one - we wouldn't need all

these different RAW converters, and Adobe wouldn't have to update their software

every other week as new cameras come out.

</em></blockquote>

 

<p>I partly agree. Although Adobe and other vendors won't need to update their

software as often, you'll still want updated camera profiles for better results. But that's

easier than code updates. If a camera outputs DNG, it'll probably ship with its own

profile, which will hopefully also be in a standard form that can be used by a range of

raw converters.

</p>

<p>I think one potential benefit of a standard format is to actually have more</

em> raw converters. Without the artificial barrier of proprietary file formats, more

companies/individuals will be able to create raw converters/processors, and they can

focus their resources on things like quality and features instead of dealing with a

whole bunch of artificially-different file formats. Photographers and other end-users

who want to work with raw files will have more, and hopefully better tools to choose

from. That's the theory, anyway.

</p>

Oops, didn't mean to italicize the whole paragraph in the previous post.

</I>(Fix italics.) If DNG is smaller than CR2, the payback might

exceed the risk. Photoshop will support DNG into the foreseeable

future, even if camera vendors do not.