Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Adobe Shows Support for its new Digital Negative Initiative
Posted by James Fee in "NEWS" @ 06:00 AM
A couple days ago Adobe talked about the new RAW format for digital cameras. Well now they are attempting to show all the suppor they have for it. Microsoft, Getty Images, National Geographic, HP, and others have all given quotes to Adobe to show that there are many people ready to use the format. The only problem, there are no digital camera makers other than HP that have said DNG is important to them. To be honest, without Canon or Nikon signing on, this format will have a long way to go before it can be the RAW standard.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this. Beyond the worry of the longevity of these RAW formats, the ability to share them with others is very difficult due to not every program being able to read NEF and CRW files (unless they are convert to jpeg). Also, these RAW format change from time to time and older software can't read RAW files from newer cameras making archiving them difficult. Maybe with Microsoft on board, native support for DNG in Windows Longhorn might be a possibility and in that case, file management will be much better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this. Beyond the worry of the longevity of these RAW formats, the ability to share them with others is very difficult due to not every program being able to read NEF and CRW files (unless they are convert to jpeg). Also, these RAW format change from time to time and older software can't read RAW files from newer cameras making archiving them difficult. Maybe with Microsoft on board, native support for DNG in Windows Longhorn might be a possibility and in that case, file management will be much better.
