Raw 1.10

[Damien Symonds]

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Opening Raw files in Adobe software

Adobe works pretty hard to promptly support the Raw files from new cameras, as soon as they are released. But new cameras are only supported by the most recent version of Adobe’s software.

You can’t really blame Adobe for this. They’re a busy company, and we can’t expect them to keep providing updates for out-of-date versions of their programs. And anyway, they’ve generously provided the generic DNG (“Digital Negative”) raw format to enable us to use our older software.

In most cases, when you shoot some Raw files, you’ll have no problems opening them. But if you discover that you can’t open them, please follow this link to find the solution.

DNG format

For some people (with software older than their camera), converting their Raw files to DNG format is a compulsory part of their workflow.

For everyone else, DNG conversion is by choice. There are reasons to do it, and there are reasons to not do it. You need to do some research by yourself, and weigh the pros and cons for your own situation. I’m afraid I don’t have enough insight to give you definitive advice about it. I won’t be discussing it any further during this class.

(Personally, I don’t convert to DNG unless I'm forced to, for the reason which I discuss in this article. But please don’t take my individual preference as gospel - you must make your own informed decisions.)

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[Shaina Teitelbaum]

This is my second time reading through, my question is I previously have been importing my photos through lightroom , lightroom converts them to DNG and I can open them up to ACR. I know this may seem foolish to you, I'm trying to switch over to just using ACR & Phtooshop. However I do like to have my photos saved to my computer. I tried to copy and past directly from my camera and open up through ACR, but it said "file not supported" It was a CR2 file.  Any idea how to fix this so I can just start off with ACR? 

[Damien Symonds]

Yes, it's just the same.  You need to convert your files to DNG format.

[margaretbonson]

http://www.damiensymonds.net/2012/02/to-dng-or-not-to-dng.html

Read this article, very helpful. Just trying to get this straight...

Well, let’s say that on Tuesday I downloaded one hundred new raw files to my computer.  Tuesday’s backup would take a little while, right?  Because 100 raw files is a lot of data to transfer.  Tuesday’s backup would take some time, regardless of whether the files were DNG or not.

On Wednesday, I edited those raw files.  How long would Wednesday’s backup take?  If the raw files were DNG, the backup would take the same (long) amount of time that it took on Tuesday.  But since I keep regular raw files, and therefore have separate XMP files, the backup is lightning fast, because the only things that need to be copied over are the 100 tiny XMP files.  The raw files themselves haven’t changed.

 

...so, when you edit a DNG technically it saves another copy? Am I understanding this correctly? Whereas if you save as RAW and you edit - it is saving another copy but in a smaller size?

[Damien Symonds]

No, raw editing never makes copies. It merely edits the tiny xmp data.

[margaretbonson]

Oh, so editing a DNG requires re-saving the ENTIRE file, whereas editing a RAW file requires saving only tiny bits of data (XMP) ?

[Damien Symonds]

Correct.

However, remember you must NEVER use the "Save" button in ACR.

[margaretbonson]

Right. Use DONE!

[Kristin M]

Damien, could I ask this question, I do shoot in RAW on a Sony "uncompressed", but my file sizes are huge, and for events I'm going through memory cards (128GB). I'm wondering if compressed would be the better option rather than uncompressed and wondered what you thought is best.  Thank you.

[Damien Symonds]

From what I've read, compressed is okay.

But my research on this topic has been pretty superficial, I admit, so do some of your own reading and experimentation.