Adobe's "digital Negative" File Format

ADOBE'S "DIGITAL NEGATIVE" FILE FORMAT

By Pete Bauer

Adobe Systems, Inc. is on a crusade. The company wants to unify the concept of the "Raw" file format. Taking the lead (and for now, at least, going it alone), Adobe has rolled out a brand new version of Raw, one it hopes will be adopted by all camera manufacturers. Here's a look at the new "digital negative," the .dng file format.

Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony, Fujifilm, Kodak, and so many more... Each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary version of the Raw file format. And, in some cases, a number of variations of Raw for a single manufacturer. This proliferation of file formats raises two potential problems: compatibility and longevity. As early adopters of high-end cameras are learning, Photoshop's Camera Raw plug-in needs to be updated before the Raw images from their new cameras can be processed in it. Why? Because the camera manufacturers are making changes (improvements?) to their proprietary versions of Raw.

Perhaps more worrying is the fact that some of these proprietary file formats have limited life expectancies. As cameras become outdated, their specific file formats are not guaranteed to be supported in future versions of the manufacturers' software. What's that you say? "But I already have software that opens those file formats and I'll always have that software"? Let's consider software you already have that runs only on Windows 95 or only in Mac OS 9. How much longer are you going to have a computer on which to run that software? Is there a date at which you'll no longer need the photos you captured this year?

Adobe's DNG file format is designed to alleviate those concerns. Convert your existing images to DNG and Adobe says you'll always have access to the images. Adobe presents this new file format as an open standard, freely available to any and all hardware and software companies to adopt without cost.

Adobe offers a free utility, Adobe DNG Converter, to copy your Raw files to the new format. DNG Converter supports all cameras supported by the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, and is expected to be updated along with Camera Raw in the future.