LR destroys your original DNG files

[docmoore]

So I will have my unaltered archive and no way to find anything?

Krogh has a very convoluted naming convention that will drive you back to your original in the archive should you need it. He suggests that all files should have EXIF / metadata keys to search and that the archival file and processed file should have identical numbers for convenience. At least I think that is what he was meant.

Bob

 

[glenerrolrd]

Krogh has a very convoluted naming convention that will drive you back to your original in the archive should you need it. He suggests that all files should have EXIF / metadata keys to search and that the archival file and processed file should have identical numbers for convenience. At least I think that is what he was meant.

Bob

Bob I can find any original image file taken in digital in a few minutes max......one at a time. So if I want to process my 5 rated images from 2006 I can find them in LR ...get the file names and retrieve them from the archive.

 

[docmoore]

Bob I can find any original image file taken in digital in a few minutes max......one at a time. So if I want to process my 5 rated images from 2006 I can find them in LR ...get the file names and retrieve them from the archive.

Same way here. Luckily as an amateur I don't have to do it very often.

Bob

 

[Godfrey]

... I wanted to reprocess 30 of my street images . Its incredibly easy to find things in LR. So I do a select on the 30 images and export them to a new folder managed by Mac OS folder structure. I specified export originals . If these were .NEF s they would be originals and a sideccar .xmp would be created . But as DNG s they get the full treatment from LR . So for some applications no problem......but I didn t now the deal was re formating to adobe standards. Thats not my definition of non destructive.

So I will have my unaltered archive and no way to find anything?

I do know how to work around this but its not easy . This isn t a new problem with integrated software products.....but LR could have done this differently simply by treating the DNG file as a raw . They aren t messing with the .NEF files.

Exporting (to LR) means "create a new file based on the information I have already". The Original option means the original file format, not the original file. In the case of a native RAW file, that's the .NEF (or whatever) plus .XMP; for a DNG original, it's a new DNG with all the added information embedded. If you just want a file copied, use the "Show in Finder" command to find them in the repository and copy them to a new place. Lightroom does not have a direct "copy the files" function, it's not a file manager in that sense.

Why do you export the 30 files to a new folder anyway? Seems a waste of space ...

If the goal is to reprocess thirty RAW images to a new rendering, put the thirty files into a collection as virtual copies to work on them, change the rendering to your heart's delight, and export the finished product. That's the advantage of using LR to do the work.

Alternatively, select the thirty files, then use the "Export as Catalog..." command and have LR copy them. Now you have your thirty DNGs copied to another place without Exporting ("re-creating") them and putting in other information. Move that to whereever you like and then do whatever it is you want to do.

Another alternative is to make a list of your thirty files then go to the backup file repository and retrieve the thirty originals if you must have them, should be a simple matter of searching out and copying them by file name to whatever new destination you have in mind.

BTW: Applications that do not implement the full DNG specification and therefore get screwed up when anything other than some rigidly defined OEM contents are there aren't worth my trouble to use them. Aperture is like that too: it won't read linearly represented DNG files, etc. I feed it only TIFFs.

 

[routlaw]

Exactly what happened to me when I first tried it, along with a few unintended file deletes that were totally unrecoverable, and those two reasons are why I refuse to use the program any more...

Don't get me wrong, I understand my issues were "user error," but I am not a moron and the moves I made or didn't make were not intuitively wrong.

Jack just for the record and clear understanding, LR does NOT actually delete files from the system irretrievably even when you (by mistake perhaps) click the delete from disc button. Rather it just deposits them into your trash bin, but unlike other deleted items on the computer this will not show the trash bin icon with items in it. Its only after you quit LR that the trash bin shows it has stuff in it. Regardless at anytime you can choose to open the trash bin and drag and drop any mistakenly deleted files to where ever you want then re-import into LR again.

Unfortunately Adobe does not make this clear or even mention it, but they should because I suspect more than one user like yourself has made this mistake and could have corrected it before the disaster.

As far as DNG files go, I have never found much of reason to use them until lately and that is only because it is the requirement for the X-rite Passport to build input camera profiles from a dng negative. This thread to my surprise represents the most activity I have heard about implementing DNG. Perhaps I have been missing something all along.

Hope this helps.

Rob

 

[Terry]

As far as DNG files go, I have never found much of reason to use them until lately and that is only because it is the requirement for the X-rite Passport to build input camera profiles from a dng negative. This thread to my surprise represents the most activity I have heard about implementing DNG. Perhaps I have been missing something all along.

Hope this helps.

Rob

Rob,
Leica M8/9 native files are DNG. M8 shipped with C1 and now M9 ships with Lightroom.

Now let's move on to the passport because I'm having some problems with it. With Lightroom you shouldn't have to make DNGs for the passport you should just be able to go to the export screen and it will automatically profile. Except, I haven't gotten it work with files from my GF1 either through the regular plug in or when I export as a DNG. Can you explain how you are using your Passport and for which cameras?

Thanks,
Terry

 

[routlaw]

Rob,
Leica M8/9 native files are DNG. M8 shipped with C1 and now M9 ships with Lightroom.

Now let's move on to the passport because I'm having some problems with it. With Lightroom you shouldn't have to make DNGs for the passport you should just be able to go to the export screen and it will automatically profile. Except, I haven't gotten it work with files from my GF1 either through the regular plug in or when I export as a DNG. Can you explain how you are using your Passport and for which cameras?

Thanks,
Terry

Terry I did not know this about the Leica cameras, thanks for explaining.

Regarding LR, dng and Passport, first let me disclose that I am still on LR 1.4 and have not upgraded to 2.0 or even the beta 3.0 so no doubt your implementation would be much different than mine. Yeah yeah I know :thumbup: the newer versions are way better but I have been so busy this last year its just one of those things put on the back burner. So in the meantime I am having to do a work around and am at a loss for why this does not automatically work for your GF1.

If you have to do this manually by opening the Passport software and importing a dng file (exported via LR) my preliminary findings are that Passport is doing a very respectable job for me with the Nikon D3 and Betterlight. The resulting profiles get installed into the correct place for them to be used later by either ACR or LR. So if nothing else you could build a profile in the same manner and see if this works.

Hope this helps.

Rob

 

[Terry]

Rob,
OK...yes you don't get plug in support until LR2 so when you finally upgrade you can go directly to the profiler. In terms of the GF1 it doesn't work either through LR or a DNG. I've been in touch with xrite. They are working on it. Was just trying to see how others have adopted the passport into their workflow.

 

[docmoore]

Terry,

Have you tried converting a raw GF1 to DNG with Adobe DNG converter rather than LR and then seeing if Passport DNG Profiler can open it?

I found that a trial M9 DNG early on worked only when I converted it with DNG converter....

Bob

 

[roey]

I forwarded the URL of this thread to Tom Hogarty (product manager for Lightroom) to see whether he can address some of the concerns brought up. Here is his reply:

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When saving metadata to a DNG file either using the preference to write XMP automatically(off by default) or explicitly using 'Command or CTRL S' when the DNG file is selected, Lightroom will place the metadata within the DNG file header. This is not destroying the file, rather updating it per the format's specification. You may also choose to update both the metadata and preview within the file by selecting that option in the Photo menu in Develop.(This provides the metadata and desired rendering preview to asset management tools like iView Media Pro) Updating the preview also allows Lightroom to apply lossless compression for Leica M9 files that the camera is unable to apply at the time of capture with the limited in-camera hardware. This behavior has been in place since Lightroom was introduced and a feature of DNG since it was created. The reason why this behavior differs from that of proprietary raw file formats like NEF or CR2 is in the name of those other formats, "proprietary." The sidecar strategy was introduced for proprietary raw file formats because they're undocumented formats and writing information back into them would be irresponsible given that there's no definition of *where* to write the data in the file or how to handle conflicts if there is data already in that location in the file. The benefit of a publicly documented format like DNG is that data can be safely written back to the file into known fields with defined parameters. When you open a PSD or TIFF file, do you resave it as a different file for every change you make or layer that you add so that you don't affect the "original?"(Yes, PSD is a proprietary format but since Adobe maintains the specification, Photoshop is keenly aware of how and where to update the file)

Capture One Pro's behavior in this area is up for investigation but if a compressed DNG file doesn't read correctly then it's an implementation error that Phase One will need to address.

For those determined to keep a pristine copy of their original capture, Peter Krogh has provided popular advice about creating a specific backup set of just original captures that are not part of the software workflow.

To the development team's knowledge there have been zero reported cases of corruption during metadata or preview updates of DNG files.(I do see countless cases of corruption during network, firewire or USB transfers and the DNG file format includes a data validation tag that can be utilized by software in the future to immediately verify the integrity of your image data within the DNG file)

Regards,
Tom

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Hope this helps

- Roey