digikam handbook - DAM section

[Andrey Goreev]

Here is the recommendations we are talking about.
I am going to remove everything related to converting to DNG unless someone
tells me that is a bad idea.

...
*RAW* format.

My recommendation is clearly to *abstain from archiving in RAW format* (as
opposed to shooting in RAW format, which I recommend). It has all bad
ingredients: many varieties and proprietary nature. It is clear that in a
few years time you cannot use your old RAW files anymore. I have already
seen people changing camera, losing their color profiles and having great
difficulty to treat their old RAW files correctly. Better change to DNG
format!

*DNG* Digital Negative file format is a royalty free and open RAW image
format designed by Adobe Systems. DNG was a response to demand for a
unifying camera raw file format. It is based on the TIFF/EP format, and
mandates use of metadata. A handful of camera manufacturers have adopted
DNG already, let's hope that the main contenders Canon and Nikon will use
it one day.

I strongly recommend converting RAW files to DNG for archiving. Despite the
fact that DNG was created by Adobe, it is an open standard and widely
embraced by the Open Source community (which is usually a good indicator of
perennial properties). Some manufacturers have already adopted DNG as RAW
format. And last not least, Adobe is the most important source of graphical
software today, and they of course support their own invention. It is an
ideal archival format, the raw sensor data will be preserved as such in
TIFF format inside DNG, so that the risk associated with proprietary RAW
formats is alleviated. All of this makes migration to another operating
system a no-brainer. In the near future we'll see 'non-destructive
editing', where files are not changed anymore but rather all editing steps
will be recorded (into the DNG as it were). When you open such a file
again, the editing script will be replayed. This takes computation power,
but it is promising as it leaves the original intact and computing power
increases all the time.

....

XMP

...

Many photographers prefer keeping an original of their shots (mostly RAW)
for the archive. XMP suits that approach as it keeps metadata separate from
the image file. I do not share this point of view. There could be problems
linking metadata file and image file, and as said above, RAW formats will
become obsolete. I recommend using DNG as a container and putting
everything inside.
...
A Typical DAM Workflow

....

2. RAW are converted to DNG and stored away into an RAW archive.

.....



Best regards,

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 5:21 AM, Remco Viëtor <remco.vietor at wanadoo.fr>
wrote:

> On vendredi 12 janvier 2018 01:14:00 CET longozrouge wrote:
> > Maybe not remove, but rewrite the recommendation.
> >
> > If your camera can create picture files in DNG format, it's a different
> > story than using the different manufacturers raw format (pef, nef, orf
> > ...).
> >
> > And if you do not archive in some raw format (DNG being one), what are
> > you going to do ? Not in jpeg , which is lossy ; tiff ? but that would
> > be extra work for conversion.
> >
> > Jean-Max
> The problem is not DNG in itself, nor the archiving of raw formats; it's
> the
> recommendation to *convert* all raw formats to DNG for archiving that's to
> be
> reconsidered (or, I'd suggest, removed).
>
> If your camera uses the DNG format for its raw output, /of course/ you'll
> use
> DNG for storage/archiving/backups.
>
> And indeed, best is to always keep the raw files, most often /in addition
> to/
> the jpgs/pngs/tiffs you got after editing. As in the film days: you keep
> the
> prints and archive those, but you *also* archive the negatives.
>
> Remco
>
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