Apple's support of DNG format is fallacious

on the Aperture brag page http://www.apple.com/aperture/ it purports "It also supports the Adobe DNG format."

I went to Bridge/ACR, grabbed five tweaked nikon NEFS and saved them as DNG files.

I imported this new folder of these five tweaked DNG files into Aperture. It did open the DNG files, but none of the adjustments to the image where evident and the display was the unaltered RAW file.

Sorry Appleture, that does not constitute SUPPORT of the DNG format. DNG is not just another RAW format, it is a RAW format with the adjustments included.

This is the last straw for me. Time to cut my losses.

I am going to eBay my Academic copy of Aperture for $200. I am a huge fan of Apple products, but not Aperture. IF this was an intro price of $49 then I would not complain.

This is nothing more than a improvement to iPhoto, but not enough to be called "iPhoto Pro".

15 1.5Ghz PB, Shiny new G5 dual 2 Ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on Dec 9, 2005 2:23 PM

20 replies

freelancer

Level 5

6,140 points

Dec 14, 2005 11:01 PM in response to Graham Welland

If you make adjustments to an image and save them back to the DNG file as a demosaiced image, you would no longer be doing non-destructive editing.

I don't even think Adobe Camera Raw will do what you're suggesting. It can save a full-resolution JPEG into the DNG along with the RAW data, but it won't save the image adjustments in the RAW data. Any settings you apply in ACR are saved only as metadata indicating what settings were chosen.

This is simply not what DNG is for, and is way beyond the scope of "DNG support". If you're looking to make adjustments and save them so another program can use the adjusted image, DNG is absolutely and unequivocally not the file format you're looking for. It simply was not designed to do this; it was actually designed pretty specifically not to do this.

Dec 15, 2005 9:29 AM in response to freelancer

It is good to note that Aperture cannot open converted linear DNG files from raw formats unsupported by Aperture. I tried to no avail with my FZ30

Dustin.

donland1

Level 2

260 points

Dec 15, 2005 10:30 AM in response to freelancer

This is incorrect. DNG does support embedding of

adjustments informaion. This is the advantage of
DNG.

This is incorrect. DNG supports embedding of any
information you want, but the Adobe Camera Raw
adjustment information is as specific to Adobe Camera
Raw as Aperture's adjustments would be to Aperture.

The information that is saved with the DNG is the
collection of settings you have applied in ACR. They
are, necessarily, only meaningful to ACR. It is not
possible for Aperture to duplicate them.

Geez... you're arguing a point I never said. I simply stated the the DNG format permits the writing of settings back into the file and that was the advantage of DNG. Nowhere did I ever say Aperture could read Adobes settings, although I wish it were possible to do, even if not perfect if it could get us back in the ball park for all previous ACR conversion settings.

Tgray

Level 1

18 points

Dec 15, 2005 12:15 PM in response to donland1

Wait for them to load.
Rename the files to what you want because Aperture
forces a space in the name and you do not want that
space.

As far as this step, Aperture doesn't force a space in the name. That space is there in the filename presets. You can easily go in a take out the spaces in the naming presets or make new ones. At least I did.

donland1

Level 2

260 points

Dec 15, 2005 12:41 PM in response to Tgray

Wait for them to load.
Rename the files to what you want because Aperture
forces a space in the name and you do not want

that

space.

As far as this step, Aperture doesn't force a space
in the name. That space is there in the filename
presets. You can easily go in a take out the spaces
in the naming presets or make new ones. At least I
did.

Yes. kinda hidden because it is there by default, but you are correct. Thanks.

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Apple's support of DNG format is fallacious