| 74.
A word of caution about Adobe Lightroom, Digital Negative
(DNG) file format, and using Beta software in general.
Article
74 of 100
Reading
some of the posts at the Adobe Lightroom Beta Forum today
gave me a bit of a fright. The topic 'RAW to LR, work, then
DNG'. This particular discussion has been going on for over
two months and started with the seemingly simple suggestion
that Adobe provide a switch to DNG from RAW image file option,
somewhere mid-stream in the RAW editing process (without having
to export to DNG file format and then re-import that DNG image
file into Adobe Lightroom).
Another
forum user points out that the problem in converting to DNG
is that at this time not even other Adobe products like ACR
can read all the information contained in the DNG files created
by Lightroom and suggested that software products from other
developers will probably never read the Lightroom DNG files
properly.
Next an Adobe employee points
out that Adobe is "converging the settings so that regardless
of raw format(DNG, nef, etc) you will be able to work between
ACR and Lightroom." No mention is made of software from
other developers.
The suggestion is made that
files be converted to DNG at initial import and all the subsequent
work in Lightroom be performed on DNG files, but the main
contention on this point, from a number of forum users, is
that this process takes too long, especially in light of the
fact that they will probably delete (from Lightroom) a good
many of their initial file imports after making a few adjustments
to those files. (DNG files can be twice the size of the original
RAW files and therefore take twice as long (or longer) to
render initially, so from personal experience I would tend
to agree that adopting this process requires some major computing
power).
Two months after starting
the topic, the original forum poster proclaims that he has
converted all his NEF (Nikon) files to DNG and has deleted
(permanently) all his original NEF files.
It is pointed out by another
forum participant that NEF files converted to DNG will no
longer be able to open in Nikon Capture, should he ever wish
to switch back or make use of Nikon Capture for any reason
in the future. Same goes for software from other camera manufacturers
and alternative software developers.
My
read on all of this is that Adobe Lightroom is Beta software
and should at this point be treated as an experiment, not
as a final solution for anyone's digital image workflow. (Not
yet anyway.)
And
I would strongly recommend never throwing away your original
camera files.
P.S.
Please do not get upset if your personal experience and views
are different from my own. These opinions are mine exclusively
and do not reflect the views or policies of any of the manufacturers
mentioned in these articles ...... George
Mann |
