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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.
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
We don't know that it will be proprietary.
Adobe has traditionally understood the value of releasing full file specifications under a non-restrictive license, as they have done with PDF and PS.
They have no motivation to make this standard proprietary, if they did that, digital camera makers wouldn't use it! All signs point to them making this one completely open.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Except that they don't control DNG either. It was released "for free" (legally & royalty-wise). So it's either NIH, stupidity, or something we don't get.
Adobe can save money with the adoption of DNG - but more money will be saved by smaller developers who cannot do the ongoing reverse engineering that Adobe does to support new RAW formats.
Adobe is leveraging their reverse engineering work in providing the free DNG Converter - this will actually benefit smaller developers more than Adobe, as they will only have to tell their users to download DNG Converter to move their RAW into DNG - the third-parties can focus on supporting DNG and providing excellent processing tools, while Adobe will continue to do the hard work of camera support (until the cameras produce DNG directly - which is of course the long-term goal).
Which shouldn't be a worry for the vast majority of cameras that use square pixels in a RGB Bayer array. I'd expect that it would be pretty easy to deal with other square pixel Bayer arrays, like Sony's RGBE and the occasional CMY. Non-square arrays, like the ones used in some Nikon pro-series SLRs, and non-Bayer setups, like Foveon's X3 system, might be harder, but I'd expect that they could be accomodated without great difficulty.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
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.