DNG Bug?

[B4b5]

I asked for DNG-support back in 2006, as Bibble 4 didn't support Minolta MRW-files from the Dimage 7hi; I used RawShooter and later Lightroom 1. In December 2007 I did buy Bibble 4, because it seemed better than LR1 and I had meanwhile upgraded to the KM Dinage 200 that was supported by B4. But I still had to keep both programmes on my PC. A few years later LR made great progress and I upgraded to LR3, which then soon became my main Raw Converter, although B5 did suddenly support my oldest MRW files. In the process of switching to LR I converted all my files to DNG because I didn't have to care for sidecar files and I saved disc space (I did not delete the originals).

I keep a few original raws "active" to evaluate the progress that B5/ASP is making and if it one day surpasses the quality of LR4 I can switch again. Beeing able to work with my DNG-converted files would be a great help in that decision. I do not understand any of the technical details behind DNG (my fault), I look at the results (A3+ prints).

With other programmes (Qimage ultimate, LR, PS Cs5, RawTherapee) the results from DNG and original RAW look exactly the same, so whatever the technical differences they don't show im my samples.

I have tried quite a few programmes in the course of time. To my knowledge B5/ASP is one of the very few if not the only one that doesn't support converted DNG. Even open source (RawTherapee) and giveaway programmes (Google Picassa) support it. I would have thought that with Corel al the helm there would be enough manpower to tackle DNG support. So I put it on the wish list. If the religious leaders of the indipendent church of Bibble decide to keep DNG on the list of the deadly sins, .. oh well, so be it; not a single RAW will remain unconverted.

Peter

Considering the perennial angst over DNG (which will never work) at bibble - Have you considered using something like "XnView" (probably better choices exist) to just
view and output your Minolta to .tif then play with it using ASP.

.tif or DNG - They're both translations (rendered images) so what's the difference?

Purely rhetorical; no answer required.

[pefunk]

Purely rhetorical; no answer required.

I will answer anyway:
16bit Tiff: 28.1 MB
MRW: 9.6 MB
DNG: 4.73 MB

With my latest camera (Sony DSLR-A 500) the ARW-files are actually smaller than the DNGs, so I am sticking with the ARWs (Tiffs are somewhere around 70MB). My working files from 2003 to May 2011 are all DNG with the appropriate adjustments, after that they are ARW; the originals are stored on another external HD. Lightroom 3 and 4beta, Qimage ultimate and RawTherapee 4.07 work with the DNGs, AfterShot doesn't. If and when AfterShot visibly surpasses LR in IQ (which I don't see at this moment) I might be persuaded to resurrect all my original MRWs and ARWs.

Peter

[grubernd]

you must loooove the new lossy compression feature of DNG!
even smaller files and it's still a DNG, right?

and those "examples" just show your incompetence in how to use Aftershot, that's all.
the software can definitely do more than that, so it's not the fault of the software.

EDIT: before the flames grow high..
"incompetence" might be considered a harsh word, but unless someone invests a serious amount of time into using a software, it is nothing more than tinkering around. and saying the defaults are not good is like getting into a newly bought car and reject it because neither the seat nor the rear-view mirrors are adjusted to ones liking. peace out.

[B4b5]

It must be time for new glasses, the Aftershot looks way better to me.

[grubernd]

It must be time for new glasses, the Aftershot looks way better to me.

lol.

PS: both images were run through an external editor, so the comparison is more than moot anyway..

[Denis de Gannes]

you must loooove the new lossy compression feature of DNG!
even smaller files and it's still a DNG, right?

At the moment this is only available in Lightroom Beta 4, and using this feature you are processing the raw data with the LR/ACR profile for the particular Camera raw file and the resulting DNG is no longer a raw file. May be considered an advantage/benefit to the Adobe/NAPP clan, who have no inclination to use any other products.

Your chef for the raw processing is Adobe so you will not have the option to use another raw conversion software "recipe" be it the software provided by your camera manufacturer or Capture one, DxO, SilkyPix, ACDSee etc.

[pefunk]

PS: both images were run through an external editor, so the comparison is more than moot anyway..

Both files (MRW in AfterShot and DNG in LR4) were converted to 16bit Tiff ProPhoto RGB. Conversion to sRGB JPG and reduction to 1000x750 pixel using bicubic sharper in Photoshp Cs5.1, exactly the same for both files. So perhaps the comparison is not sooo moot after all. With a bit more work invested in ASP (Highlights, Blacks, USM) and without the use of an external editor the ASP result looks a bit better but still the colours seem a bit yellow to me and the contrast still to high. White balance was adjusted in both pictures with the WB-picker on exactly the same spot. I am not arguing that the result from MRW using ASP is worse than that from LR4 with DNG, but it is not the other way round either. So, I don't see any practical reason for stubbornly refusing to add support for converted DNG.

http://www.funken.biz/Bilder/asp_st_pet ... 084009.jpg
http://www.funken.biz/Bilder/lr4_st_pet ... 084009.jpg

At the moment this is only available in Lightroom Beta 4

This file is from 2003 and was converted to DNG long before LR3 arrived, not to mention LR4.

It must be time for new glasses, the Aftershot looks way better to me.

You could actually be right, my 61 year old eyes need some heavy correction and were only checked a year ago.

Peter

[Denis de Gannes]

At the moment this is only available in Lightroom Beta 4

This file is from 2003 and was converted to DNG long before LR3 arrived, not to mention LR4.

The comment by me was with reference to the new Lossy DNG format that was introduced in LR 4 Beta.

[Ardfry Imaging]

Hi,

As far as I understand it now (please correct me if I am wrong) when raw files are converted to DNG with default settings , raw sensor data is transferred into Linear DNG.

[...]

Bert

This isn't what the DNG converter does, nor is it what DNG is about.

The confusion about this is partially Adobe's fault. There aren't good tools to allow people to view the structure of a DNG file (other than the dng validation command-line tool that is part of the DNG SDK).

DNG, as well as the most common modern RAW formats, are more or less based on TIFF/EP. The DNG spec states as much, and you can see this for yourself using a tool like exifprobe.
When the DNG converter processes a RAW file, it preserves the sensor data (i.e., they're not automatically converted to Linearized DNG). It's possible to create a Linearized DNG, but that's not what the tools do by default.

The converter adds some missing information that allows a baseline DNG rendering engine to do what amounts to a generic rendering of the file. The converter usually adds some camera profile information, but very often Adobe saves its proprietary information for its own tools and provides a very basic, minimal set of everything you need to do a reasonable (i.e., not the very best) rendering of the file. It does this by describing the bayer layout of the sensor so that you can de-mosaic the data.

What Corel could do is provide a Generic driver for DNG and--since the camera model and sensor data is preserved--provide improved quality and support for models it has optimized and profiled. Other than parsing the file and recognizing the information, there isn't twice as much work to do here. There may be vendor specific information that the DNG converter can't follow to the very end (since info in a RAW file can often be chained, and camera makers make a point of not completely documenting their info), but much of the information in the maker notes end up in the converted DNG.

[FrankX]

What about using DNG files for unsupported cameras?
Many new cameras use new RAW formats and are often not supported by the current software version (just have a look at the forums ).
Instead of waiting for the next software version one could at least use DNG. As I understand it's a standardized format - correct me if I'm wrong.
But what I'm not really understand is - do camera manufacturers publish some information about there RAW formats or are the software developers left alone to find a solution for there product?
So at the moment it's always like this that new cameras are not supported by the actual software?
I strongly recommend that RAW file support should be in some kind using a plug in like structure that you don't need a new product version but only a new single file for new camera models.

[claudermilk]

But what I'm not really understand is - do camera manufacturers publish some information about there RAW formats or are the software developers left alone to find a solution for there product?

Nope, these RAW formats are a big secret and all the 3rd-party converters like Aftershot/Bibble have reverse-engineered each format they can read.

So at the moment it's always like this that new cameras are not supported by the actual software?

Yep. See the answer above. This is why RAW processing has become such a huge mess.

The other problem that 3rd-party converters are trying to address is older cameras and their formats. After a while many manufacturers drop support for older formats from their OEM software, thus leaving those users with no software upgrade path. This is probably to try and force people to buy new cameras.

[Richard R]

Like many others on this Forum, I am disappointed that Aftershot Pro is unable to read DNG files that have been processed in Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom and probably other programs. I know that some other photo management software are also unable to read these Adobe processed files. (I am not familiar with Silypix, DxO, ACDSee, etc. Maybe those who are could say which program can read Adobe processed DNG files.)

I am, however familiar with one other photo management program that can read these files. Raw Therapee handles them very well. And it's a free program! But it is less appealing to me than Aftershot. A free program which I do use that is able to read and display DNG files which have been Adobe processed is FastStone Image Viewer. Given that it certainly appears possible to create a program to read DNG files which have been stripped of information by an adobe program, I hope Corel will soon incorporate that function into an early upgrade of ASP.


[/quote]

What Corel could do is provide a Generic driver for DNG and--since the camera model and sensor data is preserved--provide improved quality and support for models it has optimized and profiled.

If there is some reason why including this feature would be very difficult or cause some other problem, please let me know. I have heard this was also an issue over time with Bibble.

[Hobgoblin]

Like many others on this Forum, I am disappointed that Aftershot Pro is unable to read DNG files that have been processed in Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom and probably other programs. I know that some other photo management software are also unable to read these Adobe processed files. (I am not familiar with Silypix, DxO, ACDSee, etc. Maybe those who are could say which program can read Adobe processed DNG files.)

I am, however familiar with one other photo management program that can read these files. Raw Therapee handles them very well. And it's a free program! But it is less appealing to me than Aftershot. A free program which I do use that is able to read and display DNG files which have been Adobe processed is FastStone Image Viewer. Given that it certainly appears possible to create a program to read DNG files which have been stripped of information by an adobe program, I hope Corel will soon incorporate that function into an early upgrade of ASP.

What Corel could do is provide a Generic driver for DNG and--since the camera model and sensor data is preserved--provide improved quality and support for models it has optimized and profiled.

If there is some reason why including this feature would be very difficult or cause some other problem, please let me know. I have heard this was also an issue over time with Bibble.

Try Searching this or the Bibble forum for 'DNG'. This topic has been discussed Ad nauseam ...

[tomsi42]

Try Searching this or the Bibble forum for 'DNG'. This topic has been discussed Ad nauseam ...

I am unsure if the DNG format is as hosed as it was.

Back in 2008, I got an Olympus E-620 just after it was released. There was no apps other than Olympus own that supported those files. Not long after, Adobe released a version of ACR and DNG converter that supported the E-620. As I was using Elements 6 and ACDSee Pro at that time, I had to use DNG files to open them. Elements opened the files fine; but in ACDsee, the DNG files looked awful. Later, ACDsee came with an update to Pro, so that it recognised the E-620 raws. Funny enough the old DNG's looked OK too. I used "Camera Raw 4.6 and later" as comptability mode and did not embed the original. Think I tried the v2.4 as well. Didn't try the special options. This fits well with the comments from various persons that the converted DNG's needs profiling as well.

Let's forward to today. Last week, I bought a Sigma DP2, which aren't supported by much software. I do have quite a large arsenal of software installed (Adobe elements 10, CaptureOne Express 6, ACDsee Pro 5 and Aftershot 1). The only one supporting the X3F files were Elements 10; which is poorly suited for a RAW workflow. So I tried the latest DNG converter (6.6) and created files in the v5.4 compability mode. They were handled fine by ACDSee Pro, even though ACDSee Pro don't support native Sigma files. I am going to test with Capture One too.

It's because of this, that I am wondering if the newest format (DNG 1.3?) adds something to the mix, or there have been some errors in earlier versions of the DNG converter.

[tomsi42]

I am going to test with Capture One too.

No fun there - CaptureOne didn't read the DNG's at all ...