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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.
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
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.
Well, when you _read_ the article, you see that they're talking about a loss less format, versus JPEG which is lossy. Think of it as FLAC for pictures.
The information they're talking about retaining is, as the article puts it, before camera processing to retain truer to the capture image.
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.
Does this format offer anything that couldn't be done with PNG?
They key to this format is that it's in a format that's given off by the CCD and CMOS sensors, not in a processed colorspace of any kind (like RGB)
What really concerns me, however, is this:
which Adobe is making available for free
Is this a free-to-all? Or just free-to-camera-developers so we can force user to use photoshop or license from Adobe?
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?
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.
I dont know why they mentioned JPEG because it is not a raw dcamera format.
They mention JPEG because that's usually the options you have on a digital camera; proprietary RAW format, which Adobe is trying to standardize, or standardized JPEG, which professionals don't want to use because it's lossy.
It's a good idea, as long as the standard isn't "owned" by Adobe.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Is this a free-to-all? Or just free-to-camera-developers so we can force user to use photoshop or license from Adobe?
Looking at Adobe's history on postscript & pdf format I guess we should reasonably expect this new format's spec to be free (as beer) and usable by everyone
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.
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.
Maybe, but you appear to be more on top of things than all the people who didn't bother to do a shred of research before accusing Adobe of just inventing a new format for no other reason than to control the market. I wouldn't put that kind of tactic past them, but people should at least do some verification for their evil market domination theories....
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
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.
A few years ago it was unpractical to decode MPEG1-Layer 3 in realtime. A blink of an eye later it was merely unpractical to encode in realtime. Now we have ~100g devices that can decode and encode in realtime for hours on end.
If they (Adobe) don't want any kind of compression then, as we all know, TARGA would do.
If they in fact wants to use compression, but to use different models from the ones provided in the PNG standard, wouldn't it make more sense to extend PNG with said models?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
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.
Yeah, well, color me shocked. People on Slashdot jumping the gun? Spouting off on issues they haven't researched? Unheard of.
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
something is out on versiontracker http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 18433
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.
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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.
And how much processing time does it take? Oops there goes your battery.
But seriosuly, to draw an analogue between RAW images and sound, you would have to say that RAW is like a 192 kbps 48 bit audio feed--in other words, everything possible is captured and stored, for future manipulation. The audio might not be clear and pristine (it might have clicks and background noises), but you can take it back to the studio and remove or highlight those things in software.
By comparison, camera encoded JPEGs are like 96 kbps mp3s that were recorded from a crappy FM radio station. They get the message across, but they're dull as all getout, they miss all of the highlights, blur out the detail, and nobody sane would try to squeeze such a thing into a professional presentation--like a blockbuster movie--except perhaps as a joke.
The point is, RAW images are like digital negatives. You can adjust color balance, and tweak the way the pre-processor interpolates the color values, and all sorts of crazy stuff... And no existing image format can be easily shoe-horned to do this. Cameras RAW format dosen't have a RGB value for every pixel, because the sensors don't have the ability to capture all colors at once. There's a red sensor, a blue sensor, and a couple green sensors, all laid out in a grid a million times over. Existing formats expect to have a RGB (or CMYK) value for EVERY pixel. Not space efficient for a camera.
This DNG thing seems to be a step in the right direction; I hope it's as free (at least to the end-users) as pdf.
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, "get it right the first time" isn't possible because you don't have a laptop sitting next to you to examine the image in every fine detail.
The biggest advantage digital cameras give you over film is the flexability to NOT get it right the first time. Aside from the power to take a large number of shots to experiment with ideas you wouldn't otherwise give the time of day, it also allows you to fix things you didn't notice when you did take the image. If you just want to shoot once and hope it turns out the way you imagined, don't bother getting a dslr.
A lot can be done to process an image after capturing it, and the extra few bits of information make a huge difference in the final quality of the image. Add into the equation a sharper image and better color (jpgs seem to 'compress' the red channel more than others...). Not to mention the advantage it gives you if you decide to work in a colorspace other than sRGB (ie: more accurate color when transforming to the printer's colorspace).
"it would be pretty simple, actually. The RAW format just needs a header which describes the data it contains."
The problem is that the fundamental data isn't standardized -- the RAW data is the signal straight from the CCD, and that's very different depending on the specifics of the CCD. For example, some high-end cameras have three separate CCD's (much, much clearer image, particularly in low light), Fuji CCD's are just weird, etc. So the RAW formats are all very proprietary, not only per manufacturer, but even for each specific camera model.
So TIFF is a good starting point (it's very flexible), but all of the details would have to be defined.
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