[Digikam-users] LightZone

[Arnd Baecker]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Gerhard Kulzer wrote:

> On Tuesday 05 February 2008 Arnd Baecker wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Gerhard Kulzer wrote:
> >
> > > On Tuesday 05 February 2008 Markus Spring wrote:
> > > > Gerhard Kulzer wrote:
> > > > | if you're tagging your whole collection you might be interested in reading this:
> > > > | http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=DigikamDAM
> > > > Gerhard, this is an excellent article! Thank you for this compilation.
> > > >
> > > > One question regarding dng: As far as I know there is no linux software to
> > > > create dng's out of raw files, is this correct?
> > > >
> > > > As I have already exchanged my camery and have a pile of raw files from my old
> > > > camera, I can do nothing but rely on dcraw's strategy to digest new formats
> > > > without dropping old ones - or convert all my files to tiff in order to play
> > > > safe. But then I have to create sidecar files for all the metadata...
> > > >
> > > > Regards - Markus
> > >
> > > You are right, there's no DNG software (AFAIK) on Linux yet, unless you want to try this:
> > > http://mat.users.geeky.net/serendipity/index.php?/archives/244-A-dcraw-patch-to-enable-DNG-output-finally!.html
> > >
> > > It is of course one of our near future goals to support DNG. It needs tiff writing support be exiv2 and libtiff to start with.
> > > I took DNG up in my article because, whilst it is focussed on digiKam, it take a bit of a general stance on DAM, and DNG seems to be the way to go for RAW. Right noe the best digiKam way to go about RAW is to keep RAW files and to convert into PNG, although there is no full metadata PNG support either.
> >
> > Isn't there also the additional aspect, that the original RAW
> > data directly correspond to the sensor data,
> > which usually are separated into R G B data, in a Bayer array.
> > Thus some people argue, that it is better to keep the original
> > RAW, because better Bayer interpolators might be created in the
> > future. DNG would already contain an interpolated image, right?
> >
> > Actually, I am not sure how relevant this is in practical
> > terms, but together with noise reduction etc. it might be important
> > in some cases?
> >
> > Best, Arnd
>
> I think you have a point there, but: RAW file formats will be obsolete after some time, as I said in my DAM article, in the long run you will not be able to read RAW of the past. Therefore it is better to convert to DNG.

Hmm, I don't fully buy this one ;-): As long as dcraw compiles
and does not introduce back-wards incompatible changes
(i.e. omitting decoders), all should be fine
(Well, of course the safest might be to store a copy of dcraw together
with the raw images. Then only(?) bit-rot or changing compilers
could do harm...)

Best, Arnd