Is a DNG actually a pure RAW transformation?

[Federico Alegria]

Today I had a deep questioning inside myself. I was reviewing some RAF files from my students, and some of them couldn’t be read by my laptop. Ergo, I transformed them with Adobe’s DNG converter, and I said to them that there was nothing to worry about.

But, it is actually a loose-less transformation as Adobe states?

[Dahlia Ambrose]

I would also really like to know more about this. I have had this question as well, why dng when we have raw files. If it is to save storage space, then would it be a compressed version of the raw file? What would be the advantage of converting to dng?

[Federico Alegria]

I’ve found it useful when you just can’t open a RAW file from a very new camera.

[Graham Hart]

From Dr. Google;

RAW files are processed directly from the camera’s sensor, thus they do not use compression. Because they are lossless, the images are extremely high-quality. They show more shades of colors and better representation of white balance, contrast, exposure  etc. In addition, changes made to RAW files are non-destructive. Only the metadata that controls the rendering is altered, but the original file data remains untouched.

There is no widespread adoption of a standard RAW format. As such, specialized software may be needed to open RAW files.

DNG is a lossless format similar to RAW. However, unlike RAW that uses specific formats based on camera types or manufacturers, DNG stores image data in a compatible, generic format. Thus, even if it is created by Adobe for its applications, any software that can read or convert DNG format can be used.

DNG files are 15 to 20 percent smaller in size than RAW files without any loss of quality. The DNG format has checksum information that is used to scan and prevent file corruption.

The format removes unrecognized metadata from RAW files, making it virtually impossible to retrieve such data from DNG files in the future. Finally, since any alteration is written directly into the DNG file, you have to back up the entire file each time a change is made.

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Thank you very much for this information Graham. Very useful 🙂

[Federico Alegria]

Whoa, that is pretty useful, thanks @diripics, you really made this clear for me.

[Author]

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