Tennessee Photography by Bradley Proctor

Every camera maker has their own proprietary RAW format. They can often have different RAW formats for each of the cameras that that make. RAW converter software has to deal with all these different formats. As time goes on, it is likely that new RAW converter software will not old cameras. It would be nice to be able to keep our RAW images for years to come just as film photographers keep their negatives.

Adobe recognized this problem and developed an open standard for RAW images. They called this format DNG (Digital Negative). Adobe provides a program to convert the wide variety of current RAW formats into DNG. All of the RAW converters that I know of support the DNG format.

There are a couple of arguments against DNG. Some claim that converting to DNG will degrade the image or that there will be data loss. I have not taken a close look at the specifications for the DNG format, but I find it unlikely as the DNG format only stores the same RAW data, that was in the original RAW. It is a lossless conversion. Image quality and meta data all appear to be intact from my observations. Others claim that DNG will fade out of existence. I believe that DNG is more likely to stick around than the proprietary RAW formats. If something better comes along, there will be a converter for it, and DNG will be just as likely to be supported by this future converter as other RAW formats.

DNG makes sense to me for the reasons listed above. But there is another reason that I use DNG and that is that it is supported by Adobe and Adobe is king in the RAW converter, post processing world. Adobe isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, so either is DNG.

DNG files are approximately 25% smaller than the CR2 files that my Canon camera creates. That means less disk space used, and less DVD backups I have to make. With all the different types of proprietary RAW formats out there I think that a open standard such as DNG is important. Some camera makes, such as Leica and Hassleblad, have support for DNG right out of the camera. Lets hope the big two, Canon and Nikon, eventually adopt the standard as well.