OpenRAW

You don't have to! DNG is public and there are already many converters for it.

Public Adobe is public today private tomorrow! Let someone who can be trusted to be open develop it or Adobe hand over development to an industry committee.

Jon, DNG 1.1.0.0 is already public, and there is nothing whatsoever that Adobe could do to make it private! (Like many other people, I have a copy of the specification on my PC).

There is freely-available portable C-source (DCRaw) that will take a DNG file and turn it into an image for a photo-editor. It will still be able to do so for as long as C is supported! (Like many other people, I have a copy of it on my PC).

You already have Adobe inside your camera. If you set "TIFF", that means TIFF 6.0, and Adobe have owned that for a decade or so. It has become one of the most-used image formats, and Adobe have not attempted to make it private.

What evidence have you that development by an industry committee would be better? Here is what happened when a committee (TC 42) comprising experts from the industry developed TIFF 6.0:

TIFF/EP (ISO, based on TIFF 6.0):
Draft International Standard: 1998-11-24
Ratified and Published International Standard: 2001-10-15
Next review according to Draft Business Plan: 2006

We surely can't afford a process that takes so many years to develop Raw format specifications. How long are you prepared to wait?

If development isn't driven by camera makers and those who provide the cells then it's just another file format. Digital Negative if you like. Will it be fast? Will it be truly RAW? Or will it just be another file format that needs excessive processing from the camera? And just because Adobe publish an open specification at version one don't mean version two won't be restrictive and have licence fees attached. I bet you there is a provision for this in any licence agreement that comes with the format. They have a history of being restrictive and of suing anyone who looks sideways in their direction... Ask MM... well they own that now... think of the legal fee both will save now... MM won't be constantly battling Adobe in court. Bugger Adobe there are others with viable options. Let the camera manufacturers own their own format and MAKE Adobe pay a licence for using it in Photoshop. If Adobe are so keen to do good in the world they should publish all details of PS and AI formats. And while they are at it open the plug-in specification to fair play. The only openness that comes from Adobe is what has been forced upon them by competition, regulation and reverse engineering.

Jon: DNG is certainly a TRUE Raw format, but better engineered than others. It holds the sensor data from the camera. Therefore it is just as fast as any other Raw format.

There is certainly NOT a provision for fees in the licence for DNG. The licence is published:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/license.html

Adobe have a history of publishing their specifications. For example, TIFF is owned by Adobe, and is freely used by vast numbers of people and cameras and companies without fees.

DNG, TIFF 6.0, PDF, Encapsulated Postscript, and Adobe Illustrator file formats are freely available for download without registration at the Adobe web site.

It is not in photographers' interests for camera manufacturers to own Raw formats. Nikon demonstrated that. OpenRAW exists because camera manufacturers haven't proved trustworthy.

Adobe freely developed DNG and published it, with a worldwide licence for free use by anyone, and a free DNG Converter, without having it forced upon them.

I hear ya. But I bet you one way or another via extensions to the format or additional programming support Adobe get money out of every camera using their format eventually. They are anything but an open software company and their No. 1 interests is in getting inside every device on the market. Not that MS or the others are any better.

Adobe won't take money from camera makers who use DNG. Just as they don't take money when those makers use TIFF.

Adobe get money by selling Photoshop. DNG should encourage people to use Raw, because it makes it safer. People who use Raw use photo-editors, and lots of them will therefore use Photoshop.

DNG is intended to open up the world of Raw shooting, and accelerate the growth of Raw shooting worldwide. That is how Adobe will make their money from it.

"intended".

promises promises ... how about action?
placing active, independent checks to make sure they don't take money for standard and never will.
otherwise, you could be promoting a financial time-bomb just waiting for something like , i don't know ... management/policy change.

aren't there standards consortiums out there that regulate/manage these or similar sorts of things? pass it over to independent non-profit group that makes sure it's free to all.

They have published a worldwide licence for anyone to use DNG freely. That is "action"!

Adobe are the only ones to have acted in the interests of photographers in the practical development and delivery of a freely available common Raw format.

By the way - ISO charge for their standards! Try getting a copy of TIFF/EP and see.

It's starts off as free and open just like the plug-in standard.
Then it gets popular to the point of being essential.
Then a few necessary revisions are made to gum up the works.
All of a sudden there is a fee.

Now just who drove these manufacturers to develop non compatible PS Plug-ins in the first place?

Why wasn't the software to manage files developed to the open standards of a TWAIN device? Kodak managed that with Photo-CD. I checked with TWAIN.ORG there is no technical reason why this shouldn't have been the route.

You want me now to beleive that DNG is Adobe's gift to photographers and camera manufacturers?

Sorry but Adobe don't GIFT nothing without reason. And reason for Adobe is about market dominance.

Just cause the specs for the format are free doesn't mean Adobe won't have some code up their selve that they will be pushing on camera manufacturers.

They only wanted $200 for a font set of 4 a little while back. They only want more for PS than a camera costs. And if they had their way there would be no TruType and Display Postscript would be embedded in graphics cards.

But hey they have changed. They stop sueing MM and bought it out. With the cash from selling over priced software to mugs.

Yea now we can trust them. Oh fully!

Jon.

Jon, if you read more about DNG, you would know that much of what you said isn't true.

I've made very few comments about DNG. Adobe is who I've made comments about and they are based on what has already happened in the industry.

My only comment about DNG is... can't someone come up with a solution other than Adobe? If this isn't possible why? What is it exactly that makes an Adobe solution better than some other solution?

A few reasons:

1. Adobe created DNG, and made it freely available. No one else did. It is currently the ONLY solution!

2. ISO have shown themselves to be very slow. It is hard to know whether other standards bodies would be slow.

3. Camera makers are part of the problem. It is hard to imagine them suddenly becoming part of the solution.

4. Microsoft is a possibility. Would that be better than Adobe?

Microsoft better than Adobe?

Why don't Kodak take it on? They make sensors, have an existing format and have better experience in this than anyone. They have no vested interest in a publishing system as Adobe do. They managed Photo CD to everyone's benefit. And they have working relationships with camera manufacturers. If the format is so open then lets see Kodak evolve it.

You can bet $ that part of this format's "openness" is that you can't use it as the basis for some other format, change or modify it. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.

I'd pick them over the other 2 suggestions.

First, there is no immediate need to "evolve it" further at the moment. DNG exists, and probably millions of DNG files are created every day, so that is what should be used as the basis for any future common raw format.

I think Kodak could be part of any future organisation for managing future changes. But a problem is that, on the same day that Adobe launched DNG, Kodak and others (Konica/Minolta & Fujifilm) launched PASS. (It was for a different purpose than DNG). Where has that got to? I'm not convinced that those companies could have handled a common raw format as well as Adobe handled DNG. They haven't openly published the PASS specification. They haven't openly published a licence for anyone to use PASS. They don't appear to have provided any software to help people use it. (Unless I've missed these, and I have certainly looked for them).

DNG is taking off partly because it is supported by software - it is not just a specification. That is vital. The DNG Converter, updated as new cameras come out, it part of its success. Such converters would be needed under any alternative arrangements.

All of these discussions are missing one important fact - there is no evidence that Adobe is the wrong company to handle a common raw format, just as there is no evidence that they are the wrong company to handle TIFF.

Note that Kodak have just ceased production of their Professional Digital Cameras Not enough money in it.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0505/05053104kodakslrdisc.asp

If Adobe want to be the "open file format company" they should start with opening PSD AI and the other formats that developers currently have to reverse engineer to make filters for.

Your agreement that they are OK because of how they handle TIFF is risible fallacious. Adobe have STUCK IT UP the graphics industry with over priced products for years. They have a history of creating a defacto open standard (like the PS Plug-in) then once popular changing the rules to their benefit and calling in the lawyers and taking the world to court.

So it takes an extra year or two to develop an open standard outside the Adobe frame work. Clearly I and others can live with that.

But another file format controlled by Adobe... they just bought MM too (was better for the shareholders than going to court AGAIN). Oh please NO. Let have a format owned by someone who isn't interested in taking the world to court.

Jon, I was able to download the formats for AI, EPS, PDF, TIFF 6.0, and DNG from the Adobe website without even having to register.

In fact, my real problem was that Adobe provide so much free stuff on their website for download that it was tricky to spot the ones I was looking for among the ones I wasn't! (I was doing it mainly because someone said they didn't publish these formats. In fact, they do).

You don't have to buy Photoshop if you don't want to pay the price. Buyers of photographs don't normally ask for PSD files, they typically ask for TIFF files. And plenty of packages can output TIFF files. Corel suggest you use a combination of RSE & RSP. Why not?

(In fact, some professional photographers don't use PSD at all. They manage with layered TIFF).

I've been a Photoshop user since Version 5 and a Corel user since 1.0.

RSE... piff that doesn't support my Nikon 5700 or Sony F828 or Kodak’s 14N for that matter.

What supports these is a plug-in to PS7 or CS2.

What should have supported these cameras was a TWAIN device. Then they would have had universal compatibility. That is where the development efforts of Nikon, Kodak, Fuji, Canon... etc should have been directed. The fact they developed PS Plug-ins that were incompatible with every other image editor bar PS is a direct result of Adobe restrictive practices.

I love PS. But I don't love it to the exception of other players and of a fair playing field.

I think we can just agree to disagree here. I think Adobe's interests are centred on Adobe and market dominance. I think this is demonstrated in history. And I believe that history repeats itself and the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

If you want to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt that's your choice. Frankly, clearly I'm not willing to make such a concession.