Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Releasing New Photo Format
salmonz writes "Toronto Star just posted a story that Adobe is releasing a new digital picture format; the Digital Negative Specification,or DNG.
" Supposed to be use in raw photo formats; without the lossyness of JPEG.
Did anyone actually see a good reason for the creation of this particular format?
Does this format offer anything that couldn't be done with PNG?
I see a point of being able to store a picture before the camera's internal software starts working on it ("enhancing" it). But why a separate format? If you wanted to capture additional information for the camera, why not just add something like ID3 tags to an existing format like PNG to add this data?
Are we supposed to hate Adobe?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
The kicker is, IF the camera companies decide to use it. Standards are only standard is they are used. My questions is, can existing cameras be updated to the new format, or will the manufacturers just want to sell the new ones.
--
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Yeah, this sounds like a definite case of "Not Invented Here", with a cynical touch of "We can't control that" and "We can't license that".
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Maybe this has to do with JPEG patent issues....
A raw image is what directly comes out of the CCD. In fact it uses less storage than the bitmap that can be produced from it. But it's even better, as with it you can customize white balance and such after the picture has been taken. I use the raw images exclusively on my Canon S45 (it's a difficult feature to find). The problem appears to be in standardization.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Yet it will be up to camera makers to support the specification, which Adobe is making available for free.
People are comfortable with the idea of 'negatives'. If Adobe can make a market for this format, it will tie people into using thier tools (or thier tools will have an additional 'incentive')
I have read up on how using the raw format of the camera, and using the software on the PC you can use the additional information the camera would have thrown away, to do things such as save areas that would have been captured to dark otherwise.
Of course, each cameras format for RAW is basically that, RAW format, and this proposed file format should be nothing more than making sure each software can access it seamlessly.
So in fact, reading the article, it woudl seem like a good idea...
until you look at PDF. I just hope they don't try and put some tagging / watermarking / superflous junk into it.
*cough*
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
RTFA - Standard (free specs) raw format means you don't need to convert the stuff you camera puts on the memory card. "Digital Negative" is meant to reflect that it's a raw image straight off the lens - Lossless unlike JPEG
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I suppose the benefit would be that (ideally) when all cameras support the new format, there will no longer be a need to install and use your camera's proprietary software package just to be able to access your images.
What about using the new version of JPEG, for 'digital negatives'?
There are no royalties, no licencing, it has 2x to 5x the compression efficiency, and it's inherently multiresolutional. One file, all resolutions, no reprocessing.. It supports hundreds of component layers, data embedding, lossless encoding..
So.. why would you use some new proprietary Adobe format?
RAW is the way to go for professional photo stuff. From my Nikon D70 I can get RAW format pics which contain lots of extra info about the camera settings and ALL the digital data from the camera, not just what the JPG compressor decided I should have. This is critical for later processing of the photos. Without this extra data, lots of detail in the shadows and highlight regions will likely be lost. I for one want to choose what data to keep and what to throw away, I don't want a compression algorithm making that decision. But, here's the catch... 98% of the people won't give a rat's ass about this. This kind of format is for professional photographers or serious enthusiasts. So for most people, it means nothing, but for me it may be another great format to use since I already use all the Adobe products.
this makes dealing with RAW files less of PITA. However, has anyone other that Adobe been involved in the spec's creation, or is this just another case of the brilliant minds a [insert company/organization name] coming up with the "ultimate" solution to their corner of the world's problems, without really considering the broader context.
I await more information and a working open-source library...wake me when it's ready.
Here's another article.
Yet it will be up to camera makers to support the specification, which Adobe is making available for free.
So it looks like they aren't charging for it. And if everyone can standardize on a single format, that'd make EVERYONE'S life a lot easier.
A few remain behind and write about why they don't use the new "standard". They get branded "communists". Historical revisionism takes over, and the creators of the useless file format standard get lauded as "innovators". Anyone who complains is tagged as "just jealous".
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Adobe Systems has today announced a new unified public format for raw digital camera files and a free software tool, Adobe DNG Converter, for translating raw photo formats into the new .DNG format, which is
compliant with the Digital Negative Specification. There is no standard
format for raw files, which vary between manufacturers and cameras.
Digital Negative Specification will introduce a single format that can
store information from a diverse range of cameras. An updated Adobe RAW
File Converter adds support for DNG as well as several other cameras.
Click here for more information on Adobe DNG
Press Release:
Adobe Unifies Raw Photo Formats with Introduction of Digital Negative Specification Free Converter Tool Kick Starts New Digital Negative File Format by Translating Raw Formats into Easy-to-Use, Archive-Ready Files
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Sept. 27, 2004 -- Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced the Digital Negative Specification, a new unified public format for raw digital camera files. The company also launched a free software tool, Adobe DNG Converter, which translates many of today's popular raw photo formats into the new .DNG file format, compliant with the Digital Negative
Specification.
Raw files, which contain the original information captured by a camera sensor prior to any in-camera processing, have become popular due to their promise of greater flexibility and image quality. Until today there has been no standard format for these files, which vary between manufacturers and individual cameras. The Digital Negative Specification solves this problem by introducing a single format that can store information from a diverse range of cameras. Technology leaders, major customers, and professional photographers today also endorsed the new specification (see separate quote sheet).
"Professional photographers and other creative professionals are moving to raw camera workflows because of the outstanding creative control they get over digital images," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Digital Imaging and Digital Video products at Adobe. "However, clients and publishers have difficulty working with disparate raw file formats and nobody can be sure that today's raw formats will be supported ten years from now. Adobe customers asked us to work on a unified, public format for raw files and that's what we've delivered with the new Digital Negative Specification."
Serious photographers want to store raw files in long-term image archives, because -- unlike standard JPEG's and TIFF's -- these files represent the pure, unaltered capture. Current raw formats are unsuitable for archiving because they are generally undocumented and tied to specific camera models, introducing the risk that the format will not be supported over time. The unified and publicly documented Digital Negative Specification ensures that digital photographs can be preserved in original form for future generations. The new .DNG file format also simplifies digital imaging workflows for
creative professionals who today have to juggle multiple file formats
as they bring raw images, from different cameras, into print and
cross-media publishing projects.
New Specification Built on Existing Standards
The Digital Negative Specification is based on the TIFF EP format, an accepted standard, and already the basis of many proprietary raw formats. The power of .DNG format lies in a set of metadata that must
be included in the file to describe key details about the camera and
settings. .DNG-compliant software and hardware can adapt on the fly to
handle new cameras as they are in
I think the main reason for a good raw format is to record the output of a digital camera's sensor, which is usually 48bpp (not counting an alpha channel). Can PNG support this, along with standardized meta-information (shutter speed, aprature, ISO, camera/sensor type, etc.)?
"Like a standard lossy format with support for alpha?"
Because it's nigh on impossible to do? Lossy formats call for some compromise on quality, and alpha gradients wouldn't be that easy to translate.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I guess the "greater than" symbol doesn't show up because it might be html.
Actually no it's not useless, this would be very useful, especially if the format is open. Remember Adobe also cerated PDF - they know about making money from open standards.
You see proper digital cameras - especially the ones that cost $10,000 and are used by photojournalists and the like all let you save the image in raw format - that's a copy of the actual data that was captured before any processing. By doing so, you can take the image home and adjust it - white balance, satuaration and everything else - with photoshop et al. Rather than letting the camera make the adjustment and possibly messing things up, you know you still have the raw data so you can undo your changes. Trouble is, all the camera manufacturers ahev their own standard for raw data, so to get it into photoshop, the gimp or whatever you want to use, you must first run the raw image through software provided by your camera manufacturer - and you can bet that software won't run on Linux.
So this is good, 1 because it encourages interoperability and 2 because it further opens up proper image processing to Linux users.
Postscript is probably subject to more controls than PDF. Take the use of Display PDF rather than Display Postscript in OSX for example - Ars Technica mentions the licensing fees that Apple would have had to pay. Surely we're better off with pdf than gzipped ps?
The new format will be pronounced "Dang!"
Adobe supplies castrated versions of photoshop which get shipped with some digital camera's. They are in a very good position to pull this off.
The connotations of 'Negative' are purely historical and bear no relevance to modern (i.e. digital ) photography.
The images stored in ths format will not be negatives (i.e. inverted) anyway, contrary to what the name means and suggests.
so they made a new lossless image format. Don't we already have lossless image formats like tiff? What makes this one better than the others? Does it have some sort of lossless compression that is currently beyond compare? Will it mean that a digital camera can store more pictures in its storage space without losing picture quality?
It seems to me that this is just adobe re-inventing the wheel into a new proprietary wheel. If it doesn't provide any sort of technological improvement I don't see how it is going to do anything for them...
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm going to vomit. That's liks asking "what's wrong with the mini cooper" in an aritcle about jumbo jets. PNG is not what this format is designed to work with, RAW data from the camera is. RTFA before jumping on the open source bandwagon and screaming that everything should be PNG because you saw a blurb about it on ESR's website. Fuck, I like open source and masturbate every time I see a linux login prompt, and you zealots are starting to piss me off.
Dong?
The Picture Outline Object format, or .POO
In JPEG and MPEG, the EG means "Experts Group", though the E is usually dropped because of Microsoft's 8.3 legacy of CP/M file names.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Adobe has put up a page regarding the new format on their site. But for those who couldn't be bothered to read the original article and are posting questions like, "Why bother..."
There are currently two image formats in wide use for high-end cameras. RAW is the format of choice for people who demand high-quality shots with no compression artifacts. Unfortunately, different camera manufacturers have implemented their RAW encoding differently, which means that two cameras that can save to RAW don't necessarily use the same format. As a result, professionals often have to convert between their vendor's RAW format, and that used by their software.
The other format is good old JPEG, but as you probably know, JPEG is a lossy compression algorithim, making it unsuitable for those who demand a certain level of quality in the shots as captured.
The new format is designed to provide the same advantages of RAW, without the cross-vendor incompatibilities. Adobe is calling it "a publicly documented and readily available specification," although I didn't see any kind of license data around the download of the spec (which is on the Adobe page listed above).
Actually, if you read the other comments here, one karma whore includes the text of the press release, and it states that this format is in fact built upon tiff.
I, for one, welcome our new gigabyte-sized image format.
Lossy formats call for some compromise on quality, and alpha gradients wouldn't be that easy to translate.
Good point. However, there is no reason it should be impossible to compress the alpha channel lossless and apply lossy compression to the rest of the image.
Because the TIFF patent is probably about to run out!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Did you even RTFA? Oh, I forgot.. this is slashdot.
.DNG file format into digital cameras, printers, and software products.
For more details about this announcement, go to dpreview.com
Adobe announces new format for raw files
The Digital Negative Specification is being posted to the Adobe Web site free of any legal restrictions or royalties, enabling integration of the
The idea for this spec is not to replace JPEG or PNG. Higher-end digital cameras have a mechanism by which to save images in a lossless format. It used to be this was generally TIFF, but when you're looking at six megapixel images, TIFF nets you pretty monstrous file sizes.
Most digital camera manufacturers came up with their own lossless compression. And, of course, they're all incompatible.
Now, why Adobe? If you're shooting high-end digital photography where you care about it being lossless, and you're doing post-production on your images, what are you using? Adobe Photoshop. So instead of having to have input routines for Photoshop for seventeen different specs, Adobe would much rather the manufacturers have one standard-- can't say as I blame them. Standards are good.
Now, most of us will still keep our cameras set to shoot JPEG, but the folks who do this stuff for a living, this will benefit them. This isn't a case of trying to create a new standard to replace one that already exists to try to get market dominance, a-la Microsoft (or, heck, Acrobat/pdf for the most part...), this is a new standard to make up for the fact that there simply isn't one in this segment and there desperately needs to be.
Now, this doesn't mean Adobe won't leverage the spec and make piles of cash off of it, but at least in this case they're actually inventing something that people need instead of trying to push something on them that they don't.
There is a lossless version of JPEG, nobody seems to consider it an option.
In fact, while on that tangent, what about lossless JPEG2000? I would imagine that a lossless wavelet-based codec would be the most efficient (best compression) lossless codec you could get.
Let me put it another way:
How is adobe providing this? Sure, it's for free, but what exactly does that mean? Of all groups of people, the slashdot crowd should know better than to get taken in by the whole free thing.
Example: You need a file format. I have one, that I own patents on. I say you can use it for free, you agree. Then, later, I decide I want to start charging for it. As we did not have a previous agreement that includes this circumstance, you are up shit creek.
So no, I do not trust this, especially from adobe, until I see the fine print.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Adobe already has a page on DNG. Its is a free format and the specs are right there on the page, so GIMP won't lose out.
I believe the format is a) to save Adobe money long term (they don't have to support yet another specific sensor) and b) reduce headaches and complaints from the user. We'll just see how the camera companies and digital photography professionals react.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Like a standard lossy format with support for alpha?
JPEG supports arbitrary channels. If you really want it, you could add an alpha channel to a JPEG stream and use that. The reason we don't have it is because there's very little point.
Subject says it all. It is designed for high dynamic range images. Open, and extensible.
Reason #1: It's called "DNG" and all but the most religious/technical will be calling it "DuNG" in a short while.
Reason #2: What does "Lossy" mean? Let's face it -- JPG can be saved in a virtually lossless format at any time -- it's just a setting right? Futhermore, the moment the camera is designed, it's "lossy" since it has to be crunched down into an image of fixed color depth and fixed image size and pixelized. From that moment on, immeasurable amounts of detail is lost forever from the resulting image. So then it becomes an issue of "what is acceptable loss" which to me should be a tweakable adjustment in the way JPG is encoded to the media. Uncompressed images are just a waste of space!
Right. Name one piece of mainstream software that supports any form of "arbitrary channel jpeg". And if I did do such a think, would it open in FireFox or exploder? I'm lucky if I can get a compression slider in most apps.
Does that mean future digital cameras might* not have TIFF support?
How about you don't tell us photographers what we do/don't need?
We DO need a standard raw file format. Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Sigma, etc all have their own raw formats. This makes developing good raw-file handling software difficult, because you either have to dump lots of time into supporting several file formats, or settle for a small piece of the market and only support certain brands. It's also a royal pain in the ass for media companies who, to maintain some order in their workflow, "standardize" (fancy word for "get locked into") on one camera system maker.
Adobe is the defacto tool for processing digital images; nothing comes close. Knoll and his team have, after several years, picked up quite a bit of experience with what works and what doesn't; what customers need and what they don't, etc. Adobe's status puts them in the position to push a common raw format, and it's likely many of the companies that make decoders will add it in; it will be a case of software support before hardware support no doubt- but eventually camera makers will grumble a little and add it in. They've long since given up trying to make money off their raw format decoders.
Most media companies will no doubt be thrilled, because now they can handle Joe Shmoe's D4X raw file just like they handle Bob Smith's 1Ds Mark 3 raw file, save maybe for some image size differences.
By the way- RAW = Canon, NRF(I think?) = Nikon. Confusing that the style of file is called "raw" but Canon has a format called RAW. Please use capitalization to distinguish between the Canon format and the general style of compressed image.
Please help metamoderate.
Digital Negative Specification...shouldn't that be DNS?
Hmmm.
Since many people here are not photographers and don't deal with RAW formats, let me but it in simple terms.
.NEF files. Canon uses .CRW and .CR2.
.CR2 format. However, none of my existing programs could work with it, even though it is similar to the .CR2 format found in the Canon 1D Mark II. There was a hack for Photoshop CS that worked, but the "As Shot" white balance was wrong. Adobe released the new Camera Raw plug-in today and it works good.
Each camera has there own RAW format. Read each Manufacturer has their own proprietary format. Some even have multiple formats. For example, Nikon uses
Photographers work with RAW because it is lossless and can be recorded with 16 or 12 bits of data per pixel, where JPEG and TIFFS tend to be 8 bits per pixel. Also, as mentioned already, settings such as white balance, tone, sharpness, color, and even exposure compensation can be applied after the shot was taken.
BTW: Post-Processing is a HUGE part of Digital SLR photography for those that are only used to the Point and Shoot cameras.
Now for why it is a good thing to have a unified RAW format. I recently purchased the Canon 20D. It included a new
With each new camera release, all software writers will have to update their program if they want to support the new cameras. At the rate at which DSLR's seem to be announced this could be a huge pain. If a company like Adobe could convince the market the their DNG file is the way to go, your software would only have to work with that format.
Granted they can't call it DNS, but why do they have to say Digital Negative Specification, or DNG. Shouldn't it technically be Digital NeGative specification.
http://www.brentcastle.com
I would say that upwards of 90% of the magazines, books, and other printed materials use JPEG images in their books for ALL non-photographic images.
photographs are usually TIFF documents, but we've ran accross many customers who supply all of their graphics and photos as high-res JPEGs
Adobe lockin v.s. Quark? you obviously don't work in a printing house. Quark is basicly the only tool used in creating anything for print. Quark can create Adobe PDF Files without issues from any other software we use.
Now that i think about it, most of the software we use is based on Open standards from Adobe (Postscript, DSC(Document Structuring Convention), PDF, PJTF, JDF)
YIDIWIP (Yes I Do Work In Prepress)
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
Not a web display format.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
No, you get NEF files which are raw format files.
"RAW" means Canon's RAW format. Confusing, but there's a reason one is capitalized and the other isn't.
Please help metamoderate.
This is not a format for use on the web. This is a format for storage of raw, as-yet-unpublished images that you want to edit with all of the information from the camera 100% intact. So I hope we don't start seeing them in img elements. That would be as bad as using bmps on the web (which browsers allow... sigh).
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
From Adobe's page:
/. crowd to actually RTFA before ranting about open vs closed source
Digital Negative (DNG) specification Download the specification, which describes a nonproprietary file format for storing camera raw files that can be used by a wide range of hardware and software vendors.
So I don't see why everyone immedietly starts complaining about this being a closed format. Oh well, I guess I should know better than to expect the
Having to deal with multiple RAW implementations, this will be a lifesaver. Hope it takes off.
BTW, does anyone have a download link/torrent for the Adobe DNG Converter and Camera Raw 2.3 update? I tried to register, but all the site does is throw up errors.
Thanks,
CD
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
something is out on versiontracker http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 18433
They haven't sued GIMP
They still support Apple
They don't suck up to Microsoft
When one of those changes, by all means let slip the dogs of war. Or is that the Gnus of war? I can't remember THAT? Dogs or Gnus, people?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Try reading the TIFF spec. You'll discover that TIFF is not itself a specific file format, but rather a meta-format that defines a standard way of encoding image data that's stored in different formats! As examples, compare TIFF Fax format, TIFF LZW, and TIFF RAW...
The original JPEG had a lossless option, which was crap. JPEG-2000 has a lossless option, but that still uses the wavelet transform so that is crap too.
Transform coding is a useless complication in lossless coding. JPEG-LS beats both in compression, and has far lower resource use. As far as lossless compression goes you wont find a better standard than JPEG-LS.
Adobe is very smart about this. It's based on TIFF, so it's a pretty easy to read standard as there are a lot of libraries to read TIFF, leaving the only hard part being the processing of the pixel data.
Furthermore (and this is the smart part) they have made a converter based on thier own RAW reading software, that converts your current RAW into the new format. Now I am a little leary about this as I want to make sure the converter really captures all of the metadata I care about - but if you are into Photoshop start to finish this is great as it gives you one file you can work with and store metadata changes (like RAW conversion properties). Under the current system you can read in RAW files but Photoshop has to keep track of processing selections you've made (like white balance or color adjustments) in a seperate location as it cannot write data back to most RAW files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And if I did do such a think, would it open in FireFox or exploder?
No new file format will work without the software being modified to support it. However, if you were to modify JPEG in this fashion you would be more likely to gain support than inventing yet another specialised file format, because for applications that use IJG jpeglib (or have similar levels of abstraction in their own JPEG handling code) and already understand alpha channels, it would probably be little more than 10-50 lines of code to support this addition.
I see a lot of posts asking why bother. What I'm more concerned about is how this could work ?
Ignoring the differences in the various RAW formats between manufacturers, what about differences between two cameras from the same manufacturer ? What causes that and would DNG cater for it ?
As an example, look at the Nikon D70 and the D100. Adobe had full support for the D100 with their ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) plugin. But when the D70 came out, we waited months for true compatibility with Photoshop (yeah, yeah, you could use the nikon supplied plugin, but that was worthless really).
I'm guessing Adobe want this because in order to keep selling Photoshop to photographers, they have to keep amending ACR everytime a new camera comes out. But can a fixed standard cater for everything that Canon and Nikon will be putting in their cameras, and want to store in the RAW files 2 years from now ?
The parent post makes a lot of sense. The article doesn't say the advantages of the format, as over, uh, PNG. It doesn't say what is so special about it and whether we have to pay to use it and thus keep it out of legitimate OSS. (LAME is the best example of category, since it deals with MP3, it's binaries cannot be included in distros that follow the law.)
I dont' know why the parent post got knocked down so much. Perhaps the mods are trying to get him a coveted +5 Troll?
Oh, well. I'm going to get modded down now, aren't I?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
So they're gonna be pronounced as "Ding" I'm assuming, consider the possibilities:
.. Dude, is that a ding of my dong? HTF DID YOU GET THAT?"
... I shall stop here
Dude2: "Hey Dude, I have a funny picture to send you"
Dude1: "Dude, wait, I have dialup and it's gonna take forever"
Dude2: "No way dude, it's a ding, it'll only take a moment, here it comes"
Dude1: "Okay, got it
I'm sorry about being a jerk and whining about my comment being down-rated, but as there already are a couple of comments here that explain why it is utterly impossible to use PNG as it is as a 'raw' format, could anyone please tell me what is so wrong about pointing out a couple of vital features that PNG misses? What is it that I failed to realise? Am I supposed to hate Adobe for putting out their press release in Acrobat 6 format, or for not making their tool completely free (open source)? Or is it that (because I didn't know that for sure 10 minutes ago) I didn't state that as you can add data in any not-yet-specified format to a PNG file, you could essentially embed a DNG into a PNG (just like you can in fact out a PNG inside a DNG)?
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Adobe has posted a DNG Primer online, describing some slightly technical details. Here are the key points from the document that helps to understand what makes the format useful:
Image format: DNG is based on the TIFF-EP format, but DNG specifies the inclusion of a number of additional tags that let the converter properly interpret the raw file.
Metadata: DNG enables inclusion of metadata in EXIF, IPTC, and XMP formats.
Compression: Files can be stored as uncompressed (either bit-packed or padded to 16-bits per pixel) or with lossless JPEG compression.
Color space: DNG fles are stored in a linear, nonwhite-balanced color space (usually the native color space of the camera).
Interpolation: DNG enables file storage either in mosaic (CFA) form or in demosaiced form. Generally, a mosaiced file is preferred because it represents the original data the sensor captured and enables maximum conversion fexibility. It is also smaller than a demosaiced file. In some instances, however, saving a demosaiced file can improve compatibility, particularly if the camera sensor contains an unusual mosaic pattern that all converters do not support.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Time to shovel another image format onto the DNG heap...
In my opinion, working with the bare bones of their technology, ALL of it is well thought out, comprehensive and well explained.
They consider all of the difficulties of the problem domain. For instance, see how easy it is in PDF to create changes to an existing document, great for low powered CPUs. Just append the changed object and add on a new footer to the file. 95% of the file retained, which is a lot less expensive than re-generation of the whole file.
I think Adobe will do a good job here and post the specifications ala PDF and Postscript.
Not mentioned in the other comments is the run time hardware cost of saving this Digital Negative. I think Adobe will put effort into making this as friendly to integrated hardware capture as possible. A large portion of this has to be very little re-ordering of data as it comes from the CCD, as these usually require an in memory buffer. This fundamentally changes the nature of the format.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
This is a major boon. For those too lazy to read. It is 100% free and open for anyone to implement. Adobe is also providing a free converter.
This provides a common RAW format for cameras. This is not a png or jpg replacement, but a RAW replacement.
There are a number of third party RAW converters on the market right now. Many have limited camera support. You can bet they will quickly moving to support DNG. Which will instantly open up their usage to almost all current cameras.
With DNG support and Adobes converter you will soon be able to open just about any RAW image with any converter.
Even without camera output this is a benefit. As you can get one converter to support all your cameras.
You can archive all your RAWs as DNG and not have to worry that you kept all the software that came with the camera that generated the original RAW.
Camera support would be even better, but that may be slow as the manufactures may suffer "Not Invented Here" syndrome, or see value adds to their own format quirks.
Where is JPEG 2000 in all this? Are there any camera's supporting it yet? I'd prefer that over a new RAW format myself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yes, and we're also supposed to grumble about how Adobe is going to pull a submarine patent on this format to lock out the GIMP.
Gee, I actually read some details about the format, but I didn't know Adobe had patents around TIFF!
But I guess we're ALSO supposed to proceeed to post as fast as possible even though technical information is availiable that renders our post pointless.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would assume that a lossy alpha gradient would translate just like a lossy color gradient would.
But
Besides, questions of how this will affect the ability of open source people to use this format are valid. As has already been pointed out, submarine patents and restricted licensing are things people care about and want to know. Especially since a spate of recent technologies have tried to exclude such uses.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You wouldn't see a sucessful format like this from any camera maker - for why should other camera makers trust another camera maker to define and control a format for digital negatives?
Adobe is probably the only company that has a chance of making this format stick and become popular. They are neutral and the format is based of TIFF, so is easy to implment and if enough people start converting RAW files into this format right away, you could easily see DNG becoming a standard option on cameras just like JPG and RAW are now (well, RAW is not so standard yet but it's becoming more widespread).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who modded this up?
This format is about putting all RAW files under one (DNG) format.
Eg. Nikon has NEF, Canon has CRW, Olympus has xxx, adsf has yyy....
Isn't it better to have one open/standard format which all manufacturers support/endorse?
If you are skeptical read this.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
The parent post makes a lot of sense. The article doesn't say the advantages of the format, as over, uh, PNG.
Well, if it's really a raw format, you'll get one 12-bit or so number per colour pixel. Most cameras have twice as many greeny-coloured pixels as red or blue ones. You can't put that in PNG in an elegant way. It seems to me that this format would need to let you specify pixel spot locations (square, rectangular, hex-pattern, whatever), wavelength acceptance band of filter in front of pixel. You'd also need to have attached all the information about camera settings (and I imagine that you could put EXIF data into a PNG comment block if you wanted)
Of course, with the spec being open, someone else can and likely will write modules for the older versions of Photoshop. This would be nice for those of us without the money or inclination to upgrade.
All in all, I can't see that it's terribly useful. The camera manufacturers are unlikely to switch thier native raw formats anytime soon. If you have a Nikon camera, you get the plugin or stand alone program to convert it to a .tiff. If you're crazy enough to have both Nikon and Canon (for example) cameras, you just have two plugins. Woop-de-do...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why don't they call this YAIF - for Yet Another Image Format. Really guys would the others not suffice?
tbc++
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I read the article and I still don't see the point. How is a "raw" file format any better than any other lossless image format (like PNG or TIFF)?
Besides, just because Adobe isn't going to be making money off of the format directly doesn't mean that they didn't do this just to own it. I mean look at PDF. They don't make any money off the format or the viewer, but they bring in a good chunk of change on their PDF maker software
Sensor data is usually 12 bits per pixel, and only one color. This means a well designed RAW sensor format requires 1.5 bytes per pixel before compression... However each camera's sensor have different dimensions, different bayer filters, and possible other unique characteristics.
I support Adobe's move, but only if it is an open standard.
Camera manufactures already liscense jpeg patents. so stfu.
The format could be very sucessful even if a camera maker never adopts the format.
They key is how many phootgraphers will adopt the format, and convert exisitng RAW images to DNG.
The great thing is that DNG makes a great archival format for images as you don't loose RAW data, but your files are in an open format so that you can be sure in years to come you'll be able to read the data from the file even if support for your camera dies out.
So there are a number of good reasons why many photographers will adapt this format, and in turn why a lot of tool makers will probably support this.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fuck, I like open source and masturbate every time I see a linux login prompt
:|
That can be very embarrassing in a lab environment.
What's wrong with PNG?
The printers who want my business will use what I send them -(within reason) I don't send MS Publisher, or JPEGs.
Why support a company (Quark) that is completely about making things difficult and expensive for their customers? Not to mention the fact that their software is a kludge on hack, suffers from 'over-serialization, and run by a guy who's alienated an entire platform.
YIDSTTPH Yes I Do Send Things To Printing Houses
RAW files are used only *by* professionals and they really *do* know what digital photography is all about; so calling new digital format with archaic/absolete/wrong name which is aimed at professionals doesn't make sense.
"Negative" is only for the older folks who buy point-and-shoot cameras and don't really need DNG/RAW files.
-s
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
DING! DING!
Guy1: Say cheese!
Guy2: Cheese!
Camera: click
Camera: Please wait while Adobe(tm) DNG(tm)(c) plugin loads.
Guy1: Uh...
Camera: thrash thrash chug chug chug thrash
Guy2: What's going on?
Camera: Thank you for downloading the free Adobe(tm) DNG(tm) plugin, for more exciting features please buy Adobe(tm) DNG(tm) Complete TODAY for only $399.95!
Guy2: Do I have to stay still for this?
Guy1: Uhh I think so. Okay it's done now. Wait a minute, why the hell isn't there a "save" option under "file"? Goddamnit!
So everybody who doesn't know why PNG is technically unsuitable for this, is automatically an "open source zealot"?
No, they're idiots that spout nonsense on slashdot without doing a little research first. Here's a clue: if you don't know anything about raw data formats in digital cameras, dig out your trusty google and find out before you spout crap.
I thought we were talking about RAW format as in normal computer imaging, with all the image data in the less-compressed form...
Thank you for pointing out my mistake...
This message doesn't need a sig
Because the raw format is the data straight off the CCD plus the camera settings.
Those two together let you play with the image composition before its set into any format. Don't like the exposure? Check what the exposure setting was, then recalculate the pixels based on the original source data. Bad aliasing effect? Try again from the raw data at a different resolution or different interpolation between the CCD sensors and pixels and see if you can save the picture.
The average user doesn't care about research, nor do they want to spend hours searching Google. Until you realize and accept that, you will never succeed on the desktop.
What has not been said here is:
1) Adobe does not have the support of any major camera vendor yet, that's where this really counts
2) Adobe in it's traditional greedyness did not release this as Open Source, they released a spec but not code. They just don;t get how to work with the open source community. They think like a 1980s company.
PDF is the same way.
You can use their libraries or write your own.
No one else has supplied a solution so they stepped up. In the beginning, it was left up to the chip makers and what we have are multiple types of RAW formats. A complete mess. It's not like you camera manufacturer is not going to supply you a RAW image.
You'll just have yet another format to choose from.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
well, we do a couple jobs in house that we use both Quark and Adobes Inproduction (w/acrobat 4.0).
.PRN files printed from windows apps. Well almost anything, they dont support importing PNG images :)
But anyways, if your printer uses products from Creo, (i.e. Prinergy or Brisque) they'll be able to support anything you send them. Even
Be a freind and don't use DSC/2 though, they take forever to rip (from 10 minutes to an hour or so per file sometimes). PDF's rip (to CMYK seperations) pretty easily and very fast.
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
Problem is sensors are all different. There are different geometric pixel layouts, ie at least 3 variations of Bayesian and various stacked sensors. New designs are being toyed with constantly, which implies new algorithms to generate a usable image. Fuji has a rather interesting sensor that uses high sensitivity sites along side low sensitivity sites to improve contrast in low light conditions. Other infrared sensors utilize 7 or more "colors".
The RAW formats used by camera makers generally have pixel level information + jpg (or other low size compressed) preview + various metadata. RAW lets the operator tune the color response and even sharpen an image using cleaner algorithms than possible with a TIFF or JPG, because you are dealing with geometry and pixel levels directly, not some approximation done in-camera by interpolation and conversion to a color space. Yes even TIFFs out of your camera are "lossy" due to the unavoidable in-camera processing.
RAW allows for much more control, but you must have some information about the specific sensor being used and the appropriate (and sometimes proprietary) algorithms. There are several different algorithms for each camera maker's RAW format, including the ones that come with Photoshop CS. They all yield different results. I generally prefer the colors I get using the Fuji RAW converter versus that of CS on my S2.
This new DNG format is just like existing RAW, in that is contains pixel data + preview + metadata, only it standardizes the metadata and requires enough metadata to be able to interpret the pixel data into a useable image. That means a developer can look at a DNG and instantly know what sensor configuration and characteristics, lens settings etc, and how to interpret the pixel data (at some useable level). It also allows for manufacturers to include proprietary data, useful to their own specific interpretation algorithms. For the user/developer the actual interpretation is still left to your algorithm of choice.
The big deal of DNG is that a program that supports it (ie PhotoShop with DNG update) should, at some level at least, support DNG files from all existing and future sensors and cameras right out of the box, without a software update. Of course it is reasonable to expect that the best image possible might not come from generic DNG interpretations, but manufacturer specific ones which rely on the proprietary data within the DNG files.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
So it looks like they aren't charging for it.
That doesn't mean it's unrestricted. A file format that's free of charge but has licensing restrictions that make it hard to use in open-source software is certainly possible. There's only been half a dozen of them so far, after all.
In your patronizing rant you forgot to explain what is wrong with advocating PNG over extending TIFF. I don't see why you feel so "holier than thou" about this, given your apparent inability to argue your case.
PNG can handle anything that TIFF can. I checked, you could make a color format with >4 256-bit elements if you wanted to. (that'd be a "1024-bit format"). There'd be no problem at all adding whatever model and optional compression scheme Adobe wishes to use.
When you explain, feel free to get as technical about it as you want.
For example the part about "not be construed as a commitment by Adobe Systems Incorporated." Also, Adobe has a "nice" history about PSD, ABR and other formats (try to find any documents beyond version 6 of PS SDK). Take it with a grain of salt.
The spec not only allows the metadata to be held in EXIF, but two other formats as well - IPIC and one other I forget.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anyone know if the format is open for free implementations in other software packages?
If so then this will take off, if not then it's a waste of time...
See page 13 of the dng spec and check the Compression section, value 1 no compression, value 7 can be lossless JPEG or baseline JPEG. So where is the (more) efficient method?
That's great and all, but PNG _IS_ lossless. I'm not sure why so many people at Slashdot are against PNG, but truthfully it would make more sense to me than RAW or TIFF. Pretty much every OS can read PNG files easily, and all image software worth anything can work with PNG. I'm not sure what sort of compression this new Adobe format has, but I'd take the standardization of PNG over having Adobe as the gatekeeper of a format.
We really shouldn't even call it an image format. Most people think of image formats as a way to compress and store image data for viewing or printing; things like JPEG or GIF or PNG.
DNG is a format for storing the data recorded by the CCD's in a digital camera. This data can of course be processed and displayed as an image, but DNG really isn't an image format exactly.
All is Number -Pythagoras.
A DNG-format file is fully compliant with the TIFF 6.0 Specification Standard and the ISO TIFF-EP codification of that spec, which was designed from day one as a fully extensible raw, processed, or whatever image / metadata annotation spec.
BTW, TIFF was originally designed for offset printing folks, and in the 6.0 standard already supports a huge number of colorspace models besides RGB, and has an extensible mechanism for specifying color-data encoding and compression schemes (you can even store JPEG encoding in TIFF).
When I worked at the ground-data processing section of the Jet Propulsion labs, TIFF was occasionally used to store and transmit raw multispectral satellite data, which consisted of over 256 separate color-spectra bands from far infrared to ultraviolet, stored spatially in separate tiles.
Working together with Spot Image and other satellite providers, NASA also helped develop the GeoTIFF extension to TIFF, which annotates an image with exact georeferencing information.
It looks like Adobe went the route of using SubIFD's to define the extended data. A little bit unfortunate, since that data will not show up in a "tiffdump" listing of the file, but in any case I have no doubt that folks are already taking the spec and writing "libtiff" extensions to parse the stuff.
For more information on TIFF, see my old, clunky website that is chock full of invalid links,but still has a few useful things to say:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ritter/tiff
--Niles (original GeoTIFF and TIFF webpage author)
Amen to that. At the risk of sounding like an elitist asshole, it's obvious that a good many folks on Slashdot don't know much about photography, and think that just because they bought Sony's newest fucking Cybershot that they're the next Helmut Newton.
As for myself, I've been eagerly waiting for an influential company to propose something like this; I work in a pro lab, and having to master and keep up to date on a dozen different raw converters is very stressful. A single standardized open format that I can use right inside Photoshop (at work) or the Gimp (at home) is like the holy grail to me!
It would be interesting if this could somehow be adapted to 35mm or medium format negative scanners, too. Being able to do big corrections after the scan would save me a hell of a lot of time.
Who said anything about the desktop? This article is about raw image manipulation, which is only ever likely to be used by extreme photography nerds, or professionals. There's no reason to make this format "succeed on the desktop"
For starters, even though some cameras may not, TIFFs can be compressed. I'm pretty sure they use LWZ compression.
RAW files from a camera are not simply a better version of a TIFF; a lossless RGB image. They are a dump from the image sensor, and are not in anyway a normal RGB image. They must be processed before they become a usable image.
Due to the nature of most CCDs, the RAW will acctually be smaller than the final RGB image it produces (do a google on CCDs to know why).
At the moment. If you want to view/edit/convert a RAW image, you generally have to use special software that comes with the camera (although I think some make plug-ins for Photoshop). This is a pain for most people as it means using 2 different programs to edit an image. It also means you can't open it with any computer that just happens to have Photoshop etc. installed.
This is an instance of the TIFF-EP format. It specifies things like values for certain tags, byte ordering, etc. It's not a completely new format.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Guns. Lots of gnus.
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
If you want to update your Camera Raw (w/in Photoshop 7 or CS) the direct links seem to be the only way to get to them (at least for Win versions):
o p/cameraraw/mac/DNG_Camera_Raw_2_3.sit.hqx
o p/cameraraw/win/DNG_Camera_Raw_2_3.zip
Mac:
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/photosh
PC:
http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/magic/photosh
They are using TIFF-EP as a base - a thing they didn't even develop. So how would they have a submarine patent on anything here? If there were a submarine patent related to TIFF we would have seen that long ago. Since it's really TIFF and metadata, there simply is nothing to torpedo with the submarine.
This is just a graphic file format like any other, using bog-standard compression and metadata standards. It's just a more standard bag for raw camera data than what we've seen before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Straight from CCD files == A Good Thing with respect for total postprocessing control, as long as you have good support, say through the ACR plugin. But they're A Bad Thing with respect to most everything else -- such as guarantees that these files will be readable sometime in the future, or that you can process *your* images using non-ACR-plugin enabled tools (like, say, a homegrown 3-tier image cataloging suite).
And don't even ask about the vendor supplied RAW processing tools that can produce, say, a TIFF from a given RAW file. They usually *stink* with respect to performance, only work on Windows or Mac, and, finally, will have NO guarantee that such a tool will be available to me on my platform of choice in the year 2010.
My S50 shoots in CRW format and was the reason I bought it.
In astronomical work, there are usually two calibration images you use: the dark frame and the flat. The dark frame is an image captured with the shutter closed. It lets you identify the hot (i.e. broken) pixels. The flat is an image of a uniform field exposed just long enough not to saturate any pixels. This lets you measure the relative light sensitivity of the pixels (which is a function of both the lens and the CCD).
To get a corrected image, use this formula for each pixel:
newimage = (image - dark) / (flat - dark)
Better yet, take a bunch of darks and flats and median-filter them to get rid of cosmic rays which can introduce spurious glitches in the images.
Actually, there's a scanner program called Vuescan that will let you do something like this. It's not an open format, but the program will allow you to save the raw output from the scanner to a file and then manipulate it after the fact.
DuNG, eh? Me, I'd prefer Bantha Poodoo.
I've looked over most of the information Adobe has published, and it's not bad. It's true that a typical RAW format file is difficult to interpret. I've reverse-engineered a couple of RAW formats just for fun, (it's pretty easy if you can tell the camera to output a RAW and TIFF image of the same shot) and the Adobe propsed DNG format does have flags for most of the issues that I've come across (I have to say that there were some new ones for me, too -- the flag that specifies how closely the G in the RGRG rows compares to the G in the GBGB rows is something I've never even thought of.) It's good that Adobe has considered the possibility of more-than-three-channel cameras.
But -- I think that digital cameras are still *way* too new for this kind of standardization. Significant true innovation is happening at a frenetic pace, and if we limit RAW formats to a preconceived format we may inadvertantly (or advertantly, I suppose) squelch that innovation. Fuji's spectacular sensor with separate sensors at each pixel for dark and bright values is an example -- how would that be encoded here? One might well have a camera with vertical and horizontal polarizers on every other cell, to allow post-processessing to reduce or enhance specular highlights. Cameras could be built with psuedorandom placement of cells, to eliminate aliasing artifacts (Why not? It's not as if the semiconductor masks are laid down by hand anymore.)
In short, I think that this format could end up being a Procrustean bed that we force camera makers into, and that it's not worth it at this point.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I think he was trying to make a more general, somewhat humorous, point.
There have been several improved image formats since jpeg - all of which have failed because they were closed.
Its easy enough to make a jpeg work well enough - the pressure on outsiders to conform is unrelenting. Their product will mean nothing without Cameras - they'll have to give it to the Camera people - and that's just about everybody - then the software folks will need to use it.
The big markets for Cameras involve speciallized software (Law enforcement, pros, medical, etc)
AIK
Now, most camera raw formats use lossless compression (my Canon 300D packs 9 million pixel samples at 12 bit into 6 megabytes of raw file, which is quite good). From the format description, DNG files would be much larger. Since, CF card storage is still expensive, I don't think OEMs will be adopting this format anytime soon.
I am waiting for an XML file format that could capture the visual world, as seen by my very own eyes. Without any additional optical device (except my eye-glasses, contact lenses or sunglasses, of course).
Then there would be no issue what format the manufacturers tried to force on you.
My only other request would be to get the data transfered wireless, I really can't stand the secure digital card, inserted behind my ears.
It just gets so itchy under certain wether conditions.
Well, a raw file is a lot more compact, and it does not do anything to change the artifacts and or "lossyness" of the sensor itself.
For instance the Canon cameras use a Bayer sensor. Imagine a checkerboard where half the sensors, are green , arranged in a checkerboard pattern, and the other half the sensors alternate between red and blue. The 12 bit value of each sensor site is encoded as the eight bit difference between it and the nearest same color site to its left. ( Amiga developers will find this vaguely familiar) The theoretical case of there being a full 12 bit difference between 2 sites never happens due to the optical properties of the camera and lens.
That was hilarious.
Before we continue this endless stream of "Why don't they use so-and-so image format that I read about on Slashdot once?" questions, please, everyone, take the time to RTFA and see that this is raw camera data--i.e., before conversion to an RGB (or any other) colorspace--allowing you to tweak settings such as aliasing and other attributes used by the camera before converting the raw data into a displayable format. This is the raw data that the camera actually "sees" before being visualized in a display format.
Your joke is dung.
About fuckin' time!
Must-not-watch TV!
"Gnus don't kill people. People kill people."
And for one good reason: Adobe Photoshop is pretty the de facto standard for still image processing software used by most everyone (whether on Macintoshes or PC's). As such, it would sure make image processing of uncompressed image files vastly easier to start with not having to deal with multiple RAW formats like Photoshop has to do now.
I wouldn't be surprised that all the Japanese digital still camera manufacturers start offering DNG file support within the next 18 months. And because the DNG specification is an open spec, don't be surprised that within a year some programmer will upgrade GIMP under GPL so it can read DNG image files.
By the way, given the rapidly falling prices on 512 MB flash memory cards in Compact Flash, SD and xD formats, I wouldn't be surprised that higher-end point and shoot digital still cameras will offer DNG support (it's obvious that digital SLR's will get DNG support).
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/27/1 28208
So they're gonna be pronounced as "Ding" I'm assuming, consider the possibilities:
Yeah, they continue the tradition started with PNG aka ping.
You need to install an RTFM interface.
Now, this doesn't mean Adobe won't leverage the spec and make piles of cash off of it, but at least in this case they're actually inventing something that people need instead of trying to push something on them that they don't.
Not directly. You just used 3 and a bit paragraphs to explain why this matters for Adobe which is all fine w/me and then you continue to say it doesn't make them money? Come on...
It does make sense for Adobe from a business point of view. How about usual benefits from an open standard? Ease of use for the user? Less developing time spend on supporting many formats? No license fees for proprietary formats in the future? The list goes on, all in the benefit for Adobe (and possibly competitors, too).
A happy customer is money. A customer saved is a penny earned. More customers is more pennies. Less happy customers is potentially less pennies and less customers it less pennies. Simple as kissing.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
This article really highlights the ignorance and prejudice prevalent on Slashdot. Get off your soapbox about patents, file formats, open source, and corporations. RTFA and then comment.
DNG is a good thing.
One problem though, since a TIFF file uses 4-byte integer file offsets to store image data, doesn't that mean a TIFF file cannot have more than 4 Gigabytes of raster data ?
Current high end 22 megapixel backs with 16 bit Bayer sensors would give a 440 meg file. I would conservatively guess that we will see 200 megapixel cameras with 4 Gigabyte raw files in 10 years. If this hit's the wall at 200 megapixels, I guess it will only be about 10 years until it's obsolete.
Nobody is willing to touch JPEG2000 with a ten foot pole. AFAIK 48 companies claimed that their software patents apply to the format.
So we need to wait for 2020 before anyone can use it.
As long as I can open the file in GraphicConverter, I'll be fine.
"Download the specification, which describes a nonproprietary file format for storing camera raw files that can be used by a wide range of hardware and software vendors." from Adobe'sweb page about DNG. (emphasis added.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
- is a gimp plug-in going to be released?
Parent: I'm sure you're a reasonably intelligent person. You're screaming on an Internet message board (blog, news site, whatever...) about what are, to 95% of the population, highly esoteric IMAGE FORMATS. Maybe try channeling that considerable "energy" (relgious fervor) into something a little more worthwhile? Just a suggestion.
I agree that RAW formats and an image format like PNG are apples and oranges. (Not really econo cars and jumbo jets.) Point is that what's wrong with PNG as an image format is that it does not support EXIF tags, which makes it pretty useless for storing digital images.
No matter what format they store it in, bit rot will never be eliminated on magnetic discs.
JNG, a subset of MNG, already does this. It allows for images with JPEG color channels (at least gray, RGB, or YCC) and a PNG alpha channel. Dither alpha to 4-bit if you want lossy alpha.
a RAW file isn't negative
Is it designed for viewing? Negative. Are PNG and JPEG designed for viewing? Affirmative.
I think we are better off calling things with their real/objective names then recycling old names.
If you would rather not let others call a file containing data read off an image sensor a "negative", then do you let them call a directory a "folder"? In addition, a "file" meant something else in the paper world before it meant a structure referring to an association between a name and an ordered set of storage sectors.
I didn't notice any comment about how/why RAW formats come about. Every camera manufacturer produces several hardware components. These components cost money to design, implement, and debug. Unlike Software, hardware can't be patched, isn't free to duplicate, and reusing components yields a measurable (and often substantial) savings.
So Canon has a line of PowerShot Pro, PowerShot S, PowerShot G, and EOS Digital cameras which all use the CRW (Canon RAW) file format. Newer ones use the new CR2 (Canon RAW V 2.0) file format.
Nikon uses NEF, and Kodak uses TIFFs (thumbnails with a proprietary chunk of data). Sigma/Foveon and FujiFulm use others.
It would be nice if they all saved some standard format. The problem is two-fold:
1) Each company wants to use their own secret algorithms to decode their data and get the "best" from their format. It's one of the ways they distinguish themselves.
2) Each company has already invested in the hardware to produce these RAW files.
So the bottom line is that Adobe is a company which makes the world's most popular photo processing app. They want a file format to unify RAW processing. They produce a converter, and a plugin.
If you don't use Photoshop to process your RAW files (say you use Capture One, or Breeze Browser), then you really don't get much benefit from this DNG file format unless third parties (your converter maker) implements it.
Adobe is hoping that 3rd parties (camera makers) will adopt their format. The problem is that it doesn't provide anything new. Why would a camera maker spend a few million dollars in development costs to support a new file format with no additional benefit?
JPEG2000? Maybe, but it doesn't specify Bayer Pattern sensor data compression mechanisms. DNG? No. It doesn't have any advantages over the already existing formats.
If Intel, AMD, Sony, or Canon produced an imaging chip which used new techniques like wavelets to compress RAW data, and sold this to the camera manufacturers, then there would be value in this new standard. As it sits, the Software industry is the tail, and the hardware industry is the dog. The dog wags its tail, not the other way around.
1. DNG--being a true open format specification--means DNG uncompressed image files could conceivably be read by a GPL image processing software such as GIMP, so it would be very easy to write an update for GIMP with full DNG support.
2. You're forgetting most of the world's serious digital image processing working is done on Photoshop, the de facto standard for such work. Simplifying processing of uncompressed image files would make the work of professional photographers a LOT easier.
What's not mentioned here is also that the bits in the RAW files don't represent color in the same manner as regular image formats. The bit values for the color channels translate to Electron Volts as read by the sensors which can't be mapped 1-1 to a color value.
This combined with having to interpolate from the Bayer pattern sensor arrangement makes converting RAW pretty CPU-intensive. What Adobe is trying to do is to let the developers to concentrate on improving the conversion speed and image quality instead of having to spend all their time reverse engineering the formats.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Raw Sucks.
First off how the fuck do you "recalculate the data" in order to compinsate for a fucked up exposure?
If it's too low then areas are going to be black and lack information. If it's to high then areas will be bleached out and worse you would have blooming artifacts.
Both of these are problems introduced by limitations in hardware. The hardware that is being used to record your raw data. You can just make up information that doesn't exist.
And what is up with this "try it out at a different resolution" bull crap about? Resolution of a image is dictated by the resolution of the the CCD sensor. Your not going to take a 3 mega pixel picture and make it 4 mega pixels because your screwing around with a image before you feed the information into a translator program to turn it into a tiff or a jpeg.
What you described about the plusses of RAW are not significant to RAW, but to any other lossless format.
RAW has lots of benifits, but your confused about them.
Now for the real reasons you can't use PNG:
The proccessing power of the cameras is not great enough to support PNG formats plain and simple.
TIFF itself is a fairly intensive format, plus TIFFs are just plain f-ed up.
Jpeg is OK, you can get lots of photos in a limited space, and the lossy-ness of it doesn't realy matter so much, because the technology in todays digital cameras aren't realy that great enough anyways.
Basicly, except for realy real professional photographs recording the initial image in jpeg format is perfectly 100% ok. You just turn it into a png or tiff or whatever when you need to manipulate it.
The thing that sucks about RAW, isn't that it's a bad format. It's that it's a non-existing format.
No standards = no format. It's just the initial recording from the sensors and each manufacturer uses a different hardware setup. So a raw recording from Sony is going to be completely different from a raw recording from a Kodak camera.
This new format from Adobe can be the ticket. It's not ment to compete or anything with PNG, it's just made to solve a technical problem poised by different hardware standards.
There is no reason that a format designed specificly for digital cameras can't overcome the technical difficulties imposed by digicams and have all the benifits of RAW, but not be dependant on propriatory proccessing technics outside the hardware of the camera itself.
DuNG? DaNG. I really wanted it to be called DoNG.
I thought we already had JPEG2000 for our lossy and loss-less needs.
:)
Several chips for JPEG2000 in digital cameras have been designed, some even produced and sold. But I don't see the massive in-flux of cameras! The trouble is nobody wants a camera supporting a format that's harder for them to use on a PC, and they don't understand how old and decrepit JPEG is in comparison. After all, JPEG was standardised in the days when the fastest desktop machine took painful seconds to decode a small image, and it took years to get people to actually use it. New ideas since then have been put in writing but it will unfortunately be around the time of obsolescence that people start using them
You would be hard-pressed to sell a car with steam power yet people are using the equivalent in their cameras. Harder to use comes from less software support. The same problem I presume that this new format is going to suffer.
JPEG2000 is an ISO/IEC standard and an ITU-T recommendation. Whatever this "new" format is, it presumably doesn't have that kind of clout. People need to get with it and start supporting JPEG2000. I don't mean via plug-ins, I mean it should be there by default. A decent free-software (LGPL) library would allow Web browsers to support it, and I think this is all we need for an avalanche of support to follow. After all I wouldn't be generating PNG/JPEG pairs for my image gallery if I knew that people could access the JPIP protocol to retrieve a thumbnail and higher res. images without wasted data and in a resolution matching their monitor (on-the-fly of course!).
Yes I happen to like JPEG2000. I had to implement part of it once upon a time.
The new format is just defining the placement of where some data should go in a TIFF-EP file! Doesn't get more standard than that.
It's also more flexible than Jpeg2000 would be, in terms of additions to the format.
I thought Jpeg2000 had some patent issues as well? Not a problem with TIFF which has been around since the dawn of time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley