[Digikam-users] Pentax PEF vs DNG in digikam

[Karl Günter Wünsch]

On 09/28/11 09:10, Gilles Caulier wrote:
> The problem is raw processor (libraw), which do not use this backup
> properly for the moment. 
That backup is worthless in this context as the DNG specification
mandates that the RAW processor is supposed to work solely on the
transcribed subset of maker notes.

> At least NO data are lost in DNG
Maybe in the version you programmed behaves like that but what about the
Adobe one? I have tried DNG back when I still had a Canon 30D - with the
result that the Adobe converter botched the conversion badly.
But even with fully backed up meta data, can you reverse the process and
recreate the original file if you didn't embed it fully? If you can't
recreate the original file then at the very least you lost the ability
to use the specific processes for that file format.
Those two problems together mean that DNG only is a stopgap for cases
where a DNG converter for the RAW file in question exists but no proper
file specific RAW converter is available - and any conversion, no matter
how bad it may be, is preferable to having no conversion available at all.
In the context of the availability of open source programs like digikam,
ufraw, rawtherapee (to name but a few) that can all deal with RAW files
of any kind the need to go through that process of converting to DNG is
not needed any more, it only is needed in the closed source world of
Adobe...
regards
Karl Günter