[Digikam-users] Re: need advice re: format conversion

[Elle Stone]

Hi, Tom,

Convert if you want, but don't throw away your crw files.Dng (like
digiKam!) is still in a state of flux and getting better and better.
What if the conversion to dng that you can do next year is better than
the conversion to dng that you can do today?

Check out this forum posting: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/528900?tstart=0

Or read the very bottom of this post
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=32904790

Dng is not magic. It has to decode proprietary information to do the
conversion, one raw file format at a time - there is always room for
improvement.

Converting to dng doesn't magically make your crw file open source or
completely known. It just means that a raw processing software that
doesn't support crw files might stand a chance of working if you
convert to dng first.

Also, at present there seems to be a bug in the digiKam dng conversion
- you might not be able to get your raw file out if you choose to
embed it. http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/Extract-cr2-from-dng-images-td3171026.html

About jpeg to dng - it really can be done - read this post:
http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/linear.htm

About "convert to lossless PGF for software processing", what software
were you going to use to process the image after conversion to pgf? I
just did a trial conversion of a jpeg to pgf with digikam. showfoto
can open it (didn't try processing), but gimp, cinepaint, and geeqie
couldn't open the pgf file.

Elle Stone