[toni-a]

Just made a stitched panorama using Adobe Camera Raw, I was impressed with the quality of the generated image, PhotoShop suggested I save it as DNG file.

Is DNG a true RAW file just like Canon CR2 ? What's better saving the files as TIF or DNG ?

Now I have a 18000x6000 pixel DNG file !!!

[davidmanze]

<a>"2) What is DNG?</a>

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">DNG is also considered to be a RAW image file. It is Adobe’s proprietary image standard that was created to store image data in a generic, highly-compatible format, unlike RAW files that have specific formats based on manufacturer and camera type. Although DNG was invented by Adobe and is supported in all Adobe applications, there are other companies like Leica and Hasselblad that adopted this standard and use it in their cameras as their native RAW file format. Pentax use DNG as well as their PEF files".

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;"> 

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;"> Just as an example, Adobe CS6 no longer updates new proprietary RAW camera files, so the Nikon D500 NEF  files (Nikon's RAW system) are not supported, that means I have to use "Adobe DNG converter" to convert the D500's NEFs  into DNG files before I can process them.

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;"> In effect the results are the same, and the DNG files function as if they were NEFs, the DNG EXIF keeps exposure details, although compatibility with Nikon's viewer is lost. 

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">In order to process further you will have to transform the format to....TIFF... PSD....Jpg.....however you can keep either Canon's RAW or the DNG files as well as a TIFF/PSD/Jpg.

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">   I save NEF D750 files or DNGs from the D500 and PSD files, if necessary I transform PSDs into compressed Jpgs for on line posting.

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;"> 

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">Hope that helps!

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;"> 

<p style="text-align:justify;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/

[JJ_SO]

Adobe DNG is a pretty blown up RAW format - I'm not surprised it is not used by more manufacturers (Leica and Pentax come in mind).

 

Last Iridient update brought the possibility to open Fuji X-T2 compressed RAW which apparently is a secret equation this side of the galaxy. Then the developer shot out a DNG converter. I just don't see the point in converting 21 MB RAW files into 70 MB with tons of overhead. Lossless conversion is no rocket science, but a lot of the big boys fail entirely with it. I actually don't see the benefit of saving a small RAW as big DNG? Then I could export it as 16 Bit Tiff as well.

 

Best of it: DNG ≠ DNG! Some apps do save DNG (like VueScan to get RAW data from a scanner). Trying to open these in several other apps, be it RAW converter or PS, nothing senseful happened. But then, that was 6 years ago.

 

I'm just highly sceptical against another proprietary Adobe crap format and later they let it down like SVG.

[obican]

I had converted all my Sony RAW files to DNG for years when importing to Lightroom, only to realize that my (Sony specific) version of Capture One wouldn't recognize them as Sony files anymore and wouldn't open them. That got fixed in a later version but I don't really convert from RAW to DNG anymore.

 

As for saving as DNG from PS directly, I'd probably consider that but again, if that were a TIFF file instead, I could have edited that in some non-DWG capable software.

[JJ_SO]

If i understood correctly, it was Adobe RAW which suggested after stitching to save in DNG?

 

First of all, I don't know that ARC is able to stitch Panoramas - I always thought for that you need Photoshop?

 

And when I once stitched such a Pano, PS suggested to save it in PSB. If I remember the procedure correctly, stitching goes with rotation, geometrical changes, exposure changes and fading the ends of the single pictures. I don't know, what this massive amount of edit functions has to do with RAW?

[davidmanze]

  I am unaware of any way of stitching panos in ACR, it is a photoshop task, a little confusion no doubt!

[toni-a]

Never liked lightroom, however in photoshop you open the folder containing the RAW files, select the files you want to merge, to the upper left select merge to panorama, it will create a stitched panorama and asks you in which format you want to save the resulting file, by default it suggests DNG

here's a screenshots on my screen

 

[JJ_SO]

Toni, it must be clear to you, that after stitching there's no new RAW.

 

DNG is a container-format and able to embedd RAW. I suppose, your panorama is some sort of folder (DNG can do such a capsule) which contains the original RAWs plus your adjustments. So if you want to play lateron with different adjustments, it will open the genuine RAW again. Basically a good, non-destructive way.

 

But have you checked the file size? Also I doubt that there are a lot of apps supporting this Adobe proprietary way. You are prisoner of PS.

[stoppingdown]

Years ago I did some code development with raw formats, including DNG. While I'm definitely not an expert as the guys at RawDigger, I learned lots of things about coding and such. I agree with what other's said: DNG could have been a good thing, but Adobe screwed it up. This leaves the whole raw world in a mess, because sooner or later old camera formats are dropped.

 

 

Adobe Lightroom panorama (and HDR) are a good start, in which it is pretty simple to use those features and everything happens inside the app. But it's wrong the idea of generating another file and treating it as a new data source. I mean: the right thing to do composites, following the non-destructive approach, would be to store in the LR database the instructions to create the composite, so it can be recreated at any time. The DNG should be just a cache to avoid recomputing every time the same thing.

 

Given that, I keep my composites in DNG, as it seems the simpler thing to do, but TIFF would work all the same.

 

A stupid thing about DNG in LR is the fact that LR doesn't use sidecar .XMP files for storing the post-processing data; instead they are stored inside the DNG. This breaks the property that a raw file should stay forever as it came out of the camera. True that the bits in the photo aren't changed, but the archival workflow is affected. For instance, I compute the MD5 of every photo I take to check later that is didn't get corrupted. Its' good to make multiple backups, as far as the original file is safe. With a truly raw approach, you archive the file just after the fact, and forget it. Eventually you maintain the archival copy, in the sense that even optical media don't last forever. But the file never changes. On the contrary, whenever you make a change to that DNG, LR changes it, and you have to archive it again.