Photographers 2013 New Years Resolution(s)

[Michael Lloyd]

I'll come closer to sticking with a New Years resolution that's related to photography

So my resolution is: I resolve to convert to DNG format. I've put it off long enough.

What's yours?

[Andrew Merwin]

I resolve to convert to DNG format.

What are your reasons for doing this?

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Michael, happy 2013 to you!
Couldn't agree with you more about embracing a single standard for RAW. I've worked with DNG files for quite some time because my camera was newer than my Photoshop version. The only thing that bothered me that it was quite a lot of extra work in my workflow, specifically because I had to convert all my images after downloading from the camera and ended up with three versions of each shot I made (JPG, NEF and DNG), which took quite some time to tidy up. Not really DNG's fault, more the lack of one standard for RAW images.



What's yours?

I've got more than one:
- Get my own photo website (nearly finished!)
- Get a better and calibrated monitor for photo editing
- Improve my exposure technique and rely less on the A dial of my camera

[Daniel Cadieux]

A couple of photography-related resolutions that I should really get on:

- Update my website with larger photos (500 pixel-wide photos were good enough back then but now its almost laughable!)
- Get going on a photo book I've always wanted to do...I've finished the cover three years ago, but nothing to show inside:e3

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

For now, its just 'taking some bird pictures' as I havent done much for almost six months now :-) Very busy with work and all. Need to shake off the morning laziness and get out more.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Interesting resolution, Michael. I'm not in favour of switching to DNG simply because many competitions don't accept DNG as "proof" that you took the photo and that you didn't do funny stuff to it in post, so if you don't have the original CR2 or NEF file you are screwed. :S3:

[Roger Clark]

Interesting resolution, Michael. I'm not in favour of switching to DNG simply because many competitions don't accept DNG as "proof" that you took the photo and that you didn't do funny stuff to it in post, so if you don't have the original CR2 or NEF file you are screwed. :S3:

Interesting. DNG is just a format change with no change in data. Regardless, it is possible to create a CR2 or NEF or any other format file from a processed photoshop file (not that I've seen the software to do it), The basic code exists to make the reverse; check dcraw for example. I have written demosaicing programs to extract the red, green and blue pixels from raw data. It is not hard to take, for example, a 16-bit tiff and extract red, green and blue in a Bayer pattern and add the add wrapper data for the raw file.

Roger

[Hilary Hann]

Interesting. DNG is just a format change with no change in data. Regardless, it is possible to create a CR2 or NEF or any other format file from a processed photoshop file (not that I've seen the software to do it), The basic code exists to make the reverse; check dcraw for example. I have written demosaicing programs to extract the red, green and blue pixels from raw data. It is not hard to take, for example, a 16-bit tiff and extract red, green and blue in a Bayer pattern and add the add wrapper data for the raw file.

Roger

I was talking to a colleague the other day who knows how to convert a "worked" file back to a RAW file. I didn't ask for any more details as deception is not something I want to do. However, I do wonder how the big wildlife competitions will deal with the ability new cameras have to produce multiple exposures in camera. I can imagine lots of creative work could be done, and all within a raw file.

[Michael Lloyd]

I forgot to check this thread. I'm glad that I finally remembered it. Switching to DNG has resulted in a lot of cringing when I import from my card and then format it. But I'm hanging in there :bg3:

I do the conversion to DNG with Lightroom 4 and I have it set to embed the CR2 file in the DNG. The file size is larger which slightly negates some of the reason for using DNG but for now, it feels "safer". Basically I've moved from doing the initial edit in ACR and then move to CS6 for fine tuning to basic editing in LR4 (which is really just a prettier version of ACR), then out to CS6, and then back to LR4 for printing or exporting directly to my site.

[Bill Jobes]

Michael, what's motivating you to switch to DNG ?