Adobe Systems Proposes New Universal Format for Digital Photos

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9772029.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9772029.htm</a><br /><br /></div>"<i>Adobe Systems Inc. plans to introduce a new format for digital photos on Monday in an attempt to create an industry public standard to make the archiving and editing process compatible across all types of cameras and photo software. Most consumer digital cameras today capture images in the JPEG format, but a higher-quality raw photo format is gaining in popularity among higher-end and professional camera models. A major frustration among photographers, however, has been how different digital camera makers use different, proprietary versions of the so-called raw format, industry analysts say. That incompatibility has forced users, especially in media and other companies, to maintain multiple software programs to handle the raw photos taken by different cameras. It has also raised concerns that archived raw images could become inaccessible with future software. Now, Adobe, which dominates the photo editing market with its Photoshop products, is proposing that its new Digital Negative Specification, or DNG, becomes a universal standard for the raw format. The San Jose-based company is also launching a free software tool that will allow users to convert the raw formats from more than 65 cameras into the DNG format.</i>"<br /><br />I can understand why Adobe wants to do this and as a consumer, I hate having to wait for Adobe and others to update their software to support new RAW formats, but what incentive do Digital Camera manufacturers have to change?

[Neil Enns]

You can download a tool from Adobe today that will convert your RAW files into DNG. At least they claim it's available, and I've seen a screen cap at Luminous Landscape, but I can't find it on their download page.

I don't really see what benefit this has for camera makers either, although there's a PDF at Adobe's site (http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/pdfs/DNG_primer_manufacturers.pdf) that's marketing fluff to try and convince them to switch.

Note that Adobe also announced an update to Camera RAW (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html) for Photoshop CS. It adds new cameras (including support for the 20D, which isn't listed, but works) as well as DNG support.

Neil

[Jason Kravitz]

Good point - most camera manufactuers sell their own RAW editing software not to mention programs like Breeze Browser and C1 won't want to pay Adobe a fee for using their API.

So it wil be interesting to see where this leads.

[Neil Enns]

pay Adobe a fee for using their API.

Is there a fee involved? I think the standard is published on Adobe's website for anyone to download and implement.

Neil

[Jason Kravitz]

I assumed there would be a fee similar to the acrobat model but I suppose it would be silly for them to charge a fee and still expect the camera makers to use the new standard.