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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.
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.
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
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.
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.