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Paulgul
Member
I was reading an article on the virtues of the dng format for archiving (it was an Adobe site) and how the dng format would 'always' be supported in the future. It made me start wondering whether software in 10 - 15 years time would still be able to read the raw files of todays cameras.
How do other users on this forum store their archives - raw, dng or jpeg formats. Are there any disadvantages of dng against raw? I've never used dng so would welcome comments.
Paul
Marc Sabatella
Moderator
It's actually a kind of ongoing debate, with Adobe (predictably) arguing that DNG is more future-proof, but others arguing just as strongly that the reverse is true.
Me, I have absolutely no faith in my ability to predict the future. So I decide on DNG versus proprietary RAW files based on differences I can see in the present. To wit, I actually prefer sidecar files to hold my metadata versus embedding it within my files - mostly because it works faster for me right now. That could easily change in the future, and if so, I may start using DNG more.
Sam Dring
Moderator
Paul
How do other users on this forum store their archives - raw, dng or jpeg formats
There are many arguments for and against dng and if you google raw vs dng you will get a number of threads from other places. I store all my raw (after conversion to dng) in a folder outside the ACD dbase made easy by using downloading software which renames raws and converts to dng with the same naming sytem for both sets of files.
Paulgul
Member
Sam,
just to clarify, do you do your processing (developng) on the dng file, if so is there any penalties involved, such as speed, as opposed to processing the raw file.
Sam Dring
Moderator
Paul
I do all processing on the dng - raw stowed away and never touched unless, for some, reason I were to lose/corrupt a dng - never have done yet!
No speed difference for processing but, unlike Marc, I prefer the speed benefits of having no sidecars when it comes to file/image management. The speed downside is, of course, the delay in converting at download. I should add that I use LR to process and the updated embedded jpeg is a significant advantage.
Paulgul
Member
Ahh, I assumed you used Acdsee for processing. I don't do that many photos at a time (not a pro!) so the time taken to convert to dng wouldn't be a problem, it was more the time taken to load and display the file at the time of viewing and processing I was thinking about . I don't fully understand the embedding of jpegs into a dng file - does Acdsee support tht - I'll have to read up a bit more about the details of the format.
Paul
Marc Sabatella
Moderator
I used to find that processing a DNG took longer than processing a proprietary RAW file, because ACDSee had to rewrite the entire file to update the metadata. But the extent to which that is true actually changes form release to release. Not because DNG magically gets faster, but because my proprietary RAW files are inexplicably slowed down to the same speed as the DNG files. Mostly an issue with Batch Set Information as opposed to the processing of the image itself, but again, the specifics kind of depend on the program version.
And I should mention that if ACDSee started supporting embedded a preview like LR does, I'd strongly consider switching back to DNG.
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