By offering a public format for RAW digital camera files, Adobe hopes to set the standard, but will the market accept it?Many photographers work in Raw-format files from their digital cameras and are frustrated by the many versions out there—varying not just from manufacturer to manufacturer but also from camera to camera. But Adobe is trying to solve that problem with its Digital Negative Specification.
Adobe Systems Inc. in September 2004 introduced DNG, a public format for Raw digital camera files, along with a free software tool, Adobe DNG Converter, which translates many of the Raw photo formats (images before any in-camera processing) used today into the new DNG file format.
Adobe is also letting any manufacturer that wants to use the format in its cameras, printers and software applications do that for free without any limitations in the hopes of encouraging them to accept it as the standard.
Shooting Raw images means photographers can avoid dealing with the compression and loss of image quality involved with shooting JPEGs. But with that change comes the problem that Adobe has addressed: Each manufacturer uses a proprietary format that is specific to its cameras and might not be compatible with Adobe's Photoshop or other editing software.
The Digital Negative Specification, Adobe hopes, will become the single format, allowing users to store information from a diverse range of cameras.
Kevin Connor, director of product management for Adobe Professional Digital Imaging, said the idea to create this format really came from the intersection of Adobe's needs and the customers'.
"There are already 75 different formats after just two years of us supporting Raw [in the company's software]," Connor said. "That may be manageable now, but in 5, 10, 15 years, it won't be. Customers have already had issues with companies discontinuing support of older formats in their newer software."
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The DNG Specification now gives photographers the ability to embed the original image within the DNG file format directly from the Adobe DNG Converter so that any Raw image, no matter the camera it came from, would end up as a DNG file.
Professional photographers generally prefer to store Raw files in long-term image archives, because—unlike standard JPEG and TIFF images—these files represent the pure, unaltered shot. Because Raw formats are tied to specific camera models, it could mean that particular format would not be supported over time, according to Adobe.
Already Hasselblad and Leica AG, along with software companies Phase One (Capture One), DxO Labs, Extensis Portfolio Inc. and iView Multimedia Ltd., have agreed to support DNG.
"There's a certain comfort level to keeping it in this format so that you can read these at a later date," said Bruce Fraser, a San Francisco-based Photoshop expert and author of Real World Camera Raw. "But the only way this will be a win for photographers is if vendors start supporting it. The market will decide the success."
Connor agrees. "Ultimately, camera manufacturers will respond to market demand. We thought it was important to put a solution out there that photographers could rally around. We've designed this to be a win-win across the board."
The Digital Negative Specification is based on the TIFF EP format that is already the basis of many proprietary raw formats. Connor hopes this will make it easy on manufacturers to get behind this format.
The technology behind the 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 to handle new cameras as they are introduced. DNG is also, according to Connor, flexible enough to allow camera manufacturers to continue to add their own "private" metadata fields.
The Digital Negative Specification is being posted to the Adobe Web site, and is free of any legal restrictions or royalties, enabling integration of the DNG file format into digital cameras, printers and software products. DNG format is also supported in Adobe Photoshop CS as part of an updated Camera Raw Plug-in, also now available. Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 also supports DNG files.
"Our next steps will be to get a more formal software development kit from a software and hardware standpoint out there, hopefully later this year," Connor said. "And we'll continue our education efforts and talking to manufacturers."
Fraser thinks only time will tell if this will succeed. "Few are supporting it right now, and Nikon and Canon will be the most resistant. It's really up to the market."
