Why I Don’t Convert My RAW Images to DNG
Hi, gang and Happy Friday! I’m going to try and keep this as short and sweet as possible, but it’s important to note up front — I’m not telling you-you shouldn’t be converting your RAW files to the DNG format — I’m just telling you I’m not, and I stopped doing it a while back. Here’s why:
Converting to DNG in Lightroom takes time, I don’t get much benefit back from taking that extra time and so for me and my workflow, it just doesn’t make sense.
None of the big three camera makers adopted the .DNG format
Only a handful of smaller companies did, so it never really caught on like it would have if they had all gotten on board. I don’t share files with other users where I need to keep my RAW edits intact when sharing the original RAW file with another user (see this article), so combining the .XMP file and the RAW original into one single file isn’t a benefit to me (I don’t work with XMP files that often to begin with). Plus, if I did convert to DNG for that reason, it takes longer to re-save the entire DNG file over again each time you make a change than it is to just save changes to a .xmp text file, which happens very quickly in comparison. It’s that wasting time thing again.
Am I concerned that one day I won’t be able to open my existing native RAW files created by the camera companies?
Not at all. At the time Adobe created the DNG spec, it was probably a legit concern, but these days a 12-year-old could probably write a RAW converter during study hall, so I don’t sweat it.
I know there are a handful of other pros of using DNG, but there are just as many cons. Maybe more.
I’m happy with where I’m at — working faster, not wasting time on import converting to DNG, and I still sleep well at night. Something to think about, anyway. 🙂
Hope you have a great weekend, and we’ll catch you next week.
Best,
-Scott
P.S. Just 12-days until the annual Photoshop World Conference in Orlando. People are signing up every day (a bunch signed up just this week). You can still sign up and join in. Detail/Tickets right here. Hope you can make it.
