Using the new image format, Adobe thinks it can improve the quality and life of digital photos, but it faces severe challenges.
Adobe is vigorously promoting its "Digital Negative" (DNG) picture format, hoping to replace various formats currently used in high-end digital cameras. Adobe believes that a unified format will benefit industries and users.
At present, the challenge faced by Adobe is to create user needs and seek industrial alliances. So far, only a few digital cameras support digital negative format, which has not eliminated the situation of various picture formats in digital cameras, and digital negative format is not a neutral industry standard.
But Adobe is patient. Tom Hogarty, manager of Adobe's digital imaging products division, said: "When we announced the DNG format two years ago, we said it would be a long acceptance process.
We already have some digital cameras that support this format. This is a good progress. "
Digital negative format is a public archive format, which is used for the "raw data file" of digital cameras. Most digital cameras convert the data of their photoreceptors into JPEG format, and the so-called original data files record unprocessed picture data. Photographers must use software to convert this raw data file into a more convenient picture format, such as JPEG or TIFF format.
All single-lens reflex digital cameras (SLR) and some low-end cameras can save image data as their own "original data file" format. In order to get more detailed exposure processing and picture effect, many photographers have accepted the raw format.
Ray Barlow, a natural scenery photographer in Ontario, said: "95% of the photos I take are landscape photos, and the raw format allows me to take good photos before I actually edit them."
However, the raw format has brought problems to companies such as Adobe, and they must write processing software for the raw image format of each new digital camera.
Dave Story, vice president of Adobe's digital imaging products division, said: "The diversity of original image formats is too complicated." As more and more digital cameras increase raw support, this problem will become more and more serious.
The second main motivation for launching the digital negative format is to make the raw format have a unified filing standard, so that users can open their own photos even if a digital camera manufacturer no longer launches software to handle its raw format in the future, or a camera manufacturer launches the camera market.
Hogati said: "Now every digital camera has its own raw format. Will it be easy to find software supporting these formats in five years, 10, or 15?
Is it necessary for each vendor to launch its own format? Wouldn't it be better to have a universal solution? "
This idea attracted some photographers. Holly Yurchison, a photographer in Cincinnati, said: "It's a good idea to establish a unified standard for raw, because we don't know the future fate of these photos."
Ken Milburn, the author of Digital Camera Technology, likes the long-term effects of digital negatives. Milburn said: "It makes sense to convert any picture format in your camera into digital negative format." (Adobe currently provides a tool for converting photos into digital negative format for free. )
The popularity of DNG is not fast. Unifying the raw format is not a simple matter. Doug Meisner, senior manager of Paint Shop Pro Photo product department of Corel Company, made a * * * sound for Adobe's DNG project. But he expressed concern about the future of digital negatives.
Meissner said: "When we first heard the DNG format, we thought it was great. However, we later found that with DNG, our software still has to do a lot of processing tasks, just like without DNG. For example, our software still needs to know which camera took the picture first, so DNG is not good for us. "
Hogarty admits that DNG does not contain some information about a painting. He said: "DNG provides all the necessary data to accurately describe the information of a photo, but the algorithms in raw format used by various manufacturers in the imaging industry are very different."
Apple, which sells original processing software, also found that DNG is not perfect.
In addition, Apple believes that DNG is not a neutral industry standard because it is still controlled by Adobe.
Kirk Paulsen, senior director of Apple's professional application products division, said: "Our idea is that if DNG can be managed by a standards organization, then this format can be widely accepted by the public like JPEG format. The current situation is that we can only look at the colors of camera manufacturers or software companies. I think users still want to place their hopes on standards organizations. "
Adobe's ownership of DNG is also a problem for camera manufacturer Olympus. John Knaur, product manager of Olympus SLR camera division, said: "At present, we have not seen this format become a cross-platform de facto standard. It is just a picture format controlled by Adobe."
Although Adobe owns DNG, it discloses all the technical details of this format, and it also provides patent information to supporters of DNG for free.
Adobe also said that it plans to give up control of DNG. Hogati said: "It may be more efficient for one or two companies to form an alliance and then hand over the results of DNG to a standards organization for management."
It is not widely accepted for camera manufacturers to join DNG, but Adobe already has some alliances. They are:
Leica's M8 camera adopts DNG format.
Ricoh does not provide raw format support in most of its cameras, but in its GR cameras, Ricoh has added DNG format support.
Hasselblad, which specializes in producing high-end cameras, added DNG support to its 39-megapixel H3D camera, but this year, the company cancelled this support when upgrading this camera.
Victor Naranjo, regional manager of Hasselblad, said that DNG does not support some high-end picture functions, such as automatic compensation for chromatic aberration caused by lens. In addition, it does not support distortion correction and photo blur correction. He said: "We can't shoot directly with DNG. In the future, this format may become a reality. "
Apart from these companies, Adobe can hardly find partners.
Nikon, a big manufacturer of SLR digital cameras, said it has no plans to support DNG format.
Both Olympus and Canon are studying DNG, but they have not indicated when they will support this format. Panasonic, which has entered the SLR digital camera industry, said: "At present, we have no plans to support DNG format, but we will pay close attention to the development of this technology trend."
Espen Hildrup, a photographer from Oslo, Norway, said that he didn't want camera manufacturers to unify the format, because he didn't want to lose some manufacturers' unique image format functions, such as the warm color function of Olympus or the dimming function of Nikon.
There are more and more original formats. Adobe's story holds that the Raw format will continue to increase, so users can take better photos with their cameras.
Story said: "For consumer cameras, megapixels are not the ultimate goal. The mega pixel war is coming to an end. You can now spend $400 on a10 megapixel digital camera. "
Chuck Westfall, head of Canon's media and customer relations department, believes that the quality of Raw photos of compact digital cameras is not necessarily better than that of JPEG format. Based on this consideration, in September this year, Canon cancelled its support for DNG when it launched the10 megapixel G7 camera. The original 765,438+megapixel PowerShot G6 supported the Raw format.
There are more and more pixels in a digital camera, which means that the photoreceptor in the camera is getting smaller and smaller. The smaller the sensor becomes, the more difficult it is to distinguish the difference between the incident optical signal and the electrical signal generated by the components in the sensor. In this case, adding raw support will not help to improve the image quality.
Photographers said that Adobe must have got the support of some photographers.
Eric Lawton, an amateur photographer, said, "DNG can be a bridge between my Nikon camera and my Canon camera."
However, sports photographer Bill Frakes has reservations. His favorite photo archiving formats are raw, JPEG and TIFF, not DNG. Although he agrees with Adobe's proposal to unify the raw format, he is not optimistic about whether DNG format can become the mainstream format.
Frakes said: "I hope there will be a standard here, but I don't think this wish will come true."