# Changes in jpg - will it move people away from RAW?



## Quasimodo (Jan 23, 2014)

http://petapixel.com/2014/01/22/jpeg-standard-gets-boost-will-support-12-bit-color-depth-lossless-compression/#more-128749


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## lol (Jan 23, 2014)

Curious, but will it be backwardly compatible with existing versions of jpeg? As in, could older standard jpeg software open these new jpegs? If not, that's a big hurdle there.

Also I can't see it replacing raw directly. If you need/want raw, you still need/want raw even if this exists and was supported.

Where I can see possible benefit here is for viewing. More bit depth at the display could be beneficial, but it'll take some time for the whole computing chain to build up and support that. Think it would be nice to have higher bit depths in the mainstream.


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## Quasimodo (Jan 23, 2014)

lol said:


> Curious, but will it be backwardly compatible with existing versions of jpeg? As in, could older standard jpeg software open these new jpegs? If not, that's a big hurdle there.
> 
> Also I can't see it replacing raw directly. If you need/want raw, you still need/want raw even if this exists and was supported.
> 
> Where I can see possible benefit here is for viewing. More bit depth at the display could be beneficial, but it'll take some time for the whole computing chain to build up and support that. Think it would be nice to have higher bit depths in the mainstream.



But would not such an new jpg represent new and dramatically improved files to work with? I know that the cameramanufacturers have different signature on their jpg's, but would you not now be able to alter those presets in a much larger exent. Extracting information in highlights and shaddows would be easier too would it not? 

I agree on the whole chain. Computer displays and print already struggle with showing the richness in the data as it is, but I assume that this new format would give heightened possibilities before the chosen medium of display.


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## rs (Jan 23, 2014)

It's still a converted, processed, finished (not necessarily to the photographers liking) version of what came off the sensor. As much as it's an improvement over existing jpegs, it's still just more of the same thing. If you want to have the ultimate flexibitly in post, what can possibly beat recording exactly what the sensor captured?

I see it as another compelling reason why raw is superior. Not only have we seen raw conversion, NR and lens distortion algorithms etc improve, but now we potentiomally have a new, improved format to output to. By shooting raw we ensure that the one off moment can be revisited using these new systems (and any others coming up) at a later date, should we not be happy with how we've already processed them.


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## Quasimodo (Jan 23, 2014)

rs said:


> It's still a converted, processed, finished (not necessarily to the photographers liking) version of what came off the sensor. As much as it's an improvement over existing jpegs, it's still just more of the same thing. If you want to have the ultimate flexibitly in post, what can possibly beat recording exactly what the sensor captured?
> 
> I see it as another compelling reason why raw is superior. Not only have we seen raw conversion, NR and lens distortion algorithms etc improve, but now we potentiomally have a new, improved format to output to. By shooting raw we ensure that the one off moment can be revisited using these new systems (and any others coming up) at a later date, should we not be happy with how we've already processed them.



I might be getting this wrong, and it would not be the first time 

There was a lenghty debate in this forum (among which a member from Sweden was banned) about sensors and RAW files. At least to me it seemed appearant that RAW is not raw, as in untampered, but rather a conversion of the light that hits the sensor into meaningful elements as light, shaddows, colors ect. In this discussion someone posted a link to a site where someone had used a lot of time trying to dechipher the different ways Canon had programmed sensorinformation, thus resulting in different RAW files based on camera/sensor. Hence, if this is correct, RAW is not raw.. 

While RAW is far superior to jpg in the relative? uncompressed data made available to postprocessing, the point of my question was that will these new type of jpg. files not make postprocessing easier or being able to stretch the boundaries of the existing jpg. system that we have today?


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## ajfotofilmagem (Jan 23, 2014)

I see it with good eyes. If you think about it, after processing the RAW file, the result is almost always JPEG (TIFF eventually). So have a JPEG with higher bit depth, and lossless is great. We must remember that in the future, the software may not be compatible with current RAW. Imagine a futuristic scenario where Sony went bankrupt and disappeared from the map. In this scenario, users with Sony RAW files are fu-ked. You can say that it will never happen, but remember Kodacrome, and imagine if someone told 10 years ago that Kodak would disappear from the market and the wonderful kodacrome could not be revealed anywhere on the planet. Say that you are a lunatic, but it happened and now kokacrome is dead. Nothing prevents some 10 years from now disappears, and with it the compatibility of your RAW files. So I loved the idea of a high-quality JPEG.


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## endiendo (Jan 23, 2014)

I had also a lot of hope when Jpg2000 came.. and it was "lost" and everyone forgot..
And, the key is that major software will take it or not..
If no photoshop, lightroom, and, important, Browsers... forget it.
Jpg2000 would have been very very great for the web... but no browsers took it, so it became forgotten.
Now ? I would hope it will be different, but I'm not so confident..


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## Quasimodo (Jan 23, 2014)

endiendo said:


> I had also a lot of hope when Jpg2000 came.. and it was "lost" and everyone forgot..
> And, the key is that major software will take it or not..
> If no photoshop, lightroom, and, important, Browsers... forget it.
> Jpg2000 would have been very very great for the web... but no browsers took it, so it became forgotten.
> Now ? I would hope it will be different, but I'm not so confident..



Infrastructure would indeed be a requirement, given that this actually is an improvement.


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## rs (Jan 23, 2014)

Quasimodo said:


> rs said:
> 
> 
> > It's still a converted, processed, finished (not necessarily to the photographers liking) version of what came off the sensor. As much as it's an improvement over existing jpegs, it's still just more of the same thing. If you want to have the ultimate flexibitly in post, what can possibly beat recording exactly what the sensor captured?
> ...



OK, so there is a debate about whether raw is truly raw or not. But regardless of what the reality of that is, raw is the closest manufacturers will come to recording the light captured by the sensor. They're not going to sneak in a new version of jpeg with less processing than their raw files on that same camera.

Jpegs are by their very nature an end product - much like getting a handful of 6x4's from your roll of film, and not getting the negatives back. It has NR and sharpening baked in, plus a whole host of other post processing tricks.

While it could provide quality improvements and be very welcome for users who already shoot in jpeg, those who output to jpeg from raw converters, and sharing images online etc, it won't replace raw. It'll also need a lot of buy in to be able to become the supported on _all_ output devices (phones, tablets, computers, tv's etc) before any camera manufacturer dares to use it as the default format. For instance, many corporations still use Windows XP, and so do some end users. What would happen if you got an iPhone 6 and the images can't be viewed on anything even slightly old without codecs being installed all over the place?

These new standards take time to gain traction, and sometimes never make it, such as JPEG 2000.


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## Quasimodo (Jan 23, 2014)

rs said:


> Quasimodo said:
> 
> 
> > rs said:
> ...



This makes sense.


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## TexPhoto (Jan 23, 2014)

BlackTee by RexPhoto91, on Flickr


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## dstppy (Jan 23, 2014)

rs said:


> OK, so there is a debate about whether raw is truly raw or not. But regardless of what the reality of that is, raw is the closest manufacturers will come to recording the light captured by the sensor. They're not going to sneak in a new version of jpeg with less processing than their raw files on that same camera.
> 
> Jpegs are by their very nature an end product - much like getting a handful of 6x4's from your roll of film, and not getting the negatives back. It has NR and sharpening baked in, plus a whole host of other post processing tricks.
> 
> ...



+1

Please come down to the service desk and accept your voucher for a free, small ice cream cone.

We also would have accepted the answer "no"

;D


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## hgraf (Jan 23, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> I see it with good eyes. If you think about it, after processing the RAW file, the result is almost always JPEG (TIFF eventually). So have a JPEG with higher bit depth, and lossless is great. We must remember that in the future, the software may not be compatible with current RAW. Imagine a futuristic scenario where Sony went bankrupt and disappeared from the map. In this scenario, users with Sony RAW files are fu-ked. You can say that it will never happen, but remember Kodacrome, and imagine if someone told 10 years ago that Kodak would disappear from the market and the wonderful kodacrome could not be revealed anywhere on the planet. Say that you are a lunatic, but it happened and now kokacrome is dead. Nothing prevents some 10 years from now disappears, and with it the compatibility of your RAW files. So I loved the idea of a high-quality JPEG.



Sorry, but what the heck are you talking about?

Say Sony DID disappear? Would that mean that all instances of any software that can open a Sony RAW file would disappear with it? How is one related to another?

True, if Sony were gone, it's likely that eventually software that opens RAW Sony would loose that ability in future versions, but that doesn't remove prior versions from the planet. And how often would you be editing a 10 year old RAW file anyways? I'm always amazed by this impression people give of constantly re-editing their files a decade after they were shot. That said, if that WAS your bag, finding software to convert your 10 year old RAW file wouldn't be hard.

Personally on the lossless side I see almost zero benefit to this. The only one I can see is that it would be a more "universal" lossless format (it's not equivalent to RAW in any way). But we already have that in TIFF and in DNG. Why another format?

The added colour depth OTOH IS useful IMHO. As displays with deep colour become more common it will be useful to have a widely adopted format that supports it. That's assuming this format gets adopted. I doubt it.


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## sjprg (Jan 23, 2014)

NO! Not in my realm.


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## anthonyd (Jan 23, 2014)

hgraf said:


> ...
> That's assuming this format gets adopted. I doubt it.



I'm not sure that there is a way to _not_ adopt this. It's not a new format. It's the latest version of the standard libjpeg. Now, software that works with jpg might choose to ignore the new features, even if they use the latest version of the library, which would be equivalent to not adopting it, but that sounds a little lame from a marketing perspective.

If say lightroom does not allow you to save 12bit jpeg two years from now, wouldn't that be a great selling point for all the competitors? Look, we can do something that lightroom can't and we are even standard compliant!


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## distant.star (Jan 23, 2014)

.
Interesting, I was just reading about this in Tim Grey's newsletter. He said:

"What this means is that while the “official” JPEG ISO standard has not been updated, a software library that allows applications making use of that library has been updated. The software library in question is called “libjpeg”, and my understanding is that the free GIMP imaging software makes use of this library but that Photoshop does not. In other words, with certain applications, if they update their software to the latest version of libjpeg, users could then save JPEG images with lossless compression and 12-bit per channel support. They just wouldn’t be able to open those images properly in most other software.

"In other words, this update is a bit of a non-starter for many photographers, including myself."


Tim Grey site:

http://www.timgrey.com/


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## Don Haines (Jan 23, 2014)

NO!

And there are many many flavours of RAW.... Canon RAW is not Nikon RAW is not Olympus RAW etc. etc. etc...

Even Canon RAW is not the same as Canon RAW.... As features change (bit depth etc) the RAW format evolves...RAW from a 70D is not the same as RAW from a 20D....

And I remember when Jpg supported 256 colours..... standards evolve...


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## hgraf (Jan 23, 2014)

anthonyd said:


> hgraf said:
> 
> 
> > ...
> ...



You're of course assuming that all software uses the libjpeg library. That isn't true. Most GPL stuff does indeed use libjpeg as is, but very few propriety software packages do. 

The license for libjpeg states that you can use the library in any product, but you must acknowledge that use. So chances are, if your software package uses libjpeg they'll be an attribution somewhere for it.

This is all ignoring that the majority source of jpeg files isn't software, it's hardware. There is NO way that embedded hardware uses libjpeg as is, it's far too big and cumbersome to run as embedded software on most platforms (big and cumbersome = power hungry), nevermind the hardware implementations of jpeg compression baked into many asics.

Fact is, for the majority of the market, jpg is "good enough", and I don't see offering support for this format to the average consumer being something the consumers will flock towards. Most consumers add stupid instagram filters to their photos, they don't care about high colour depth or lossless encoding, and I don't see that changing.


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## Canon1 (Jan 23, 2014)

No. Those of us who shoot in raw to take advantage of the stable file format as well as the versatility with editing will continue to shoot raw. The reasons for shooting raw still exist.


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## emag (Jan 23, 2014)

Never


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## tcmatthews (Jan 23, 2014)

Given then that loss-less Jpeg has been around a while and not wildly adopted I doubt this will change anything. So No. I will not stop shooting raw. 

The big problem is that all of the current Loss-less jpeg versions are either incompatible or incur copyright /patent issues. And while it is now true there are now non-patent encumbered free software available their methods are non-standard and not be widely supported.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 23, 2014)

JPEG, be it 8 bit or 12 bit or 16 bit has the guess that the camera firmware makes as to the colors, brightness, contrast, black levels, baked in, and difficult to change without introducing artifacts.
Raw is much more flexible in allowing those parameters to be adjusted before baking them in.

It will be a long time before most infra structure can use a new format. At first (5+ Yrs), most of the files will have to be down converted to 8 bit jpeg in order to use them anywhere. Eight bit jpeg is embedded into everything, and that's the issue. Printers, computer software, not just photo editing software or the web, but everything from e-mail to publication software to things like financial software, there is so much of it that some of it won't change for 50 years. Expensive multi million dollar custom software used by big corporations will not change quickly, some of that is 50 years old and uses long obsolete software like FAP, or more recently obsolete software like Cobol.


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## Lichtgestalt (Jan 23, 2014)

in the end not much changes.

WB is baked into the file.
losless... jpg already exists.

more color depth... well that´s nice for the web i think.
but does not make it a competition for RAW.


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## jdramirez (Jan 23, 2014)

No. It is the cool thing to do... shoot in raw. And nothing will convince me otherwise... except the cool kids decoding jpg is better.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Jan 23, 2014)

I don't see how it can replace RAW since RAW is still in Bayer format and so on and so forth.
It might well replace TIFF and PNG and so on for storing high-bit edits and final outputs though (although 12bits would still be a bit less flexible for going back and re-editing than the 15bits or so you can already use with other formats).


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## captainkanji (Jan 23, 2014)

I convert RAW to DNG and archive the DNGs. I hope I'm doing it right. I can't see spending all that money on equipment and not saving uncompressed files.


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## TexPhoto (Jan 23, 2014)

Forgive me Forum for I have sinned.
I shoot RAW + JPEG. I am willing to admit that now. At sporting events my files must occasionally be emailed to editors within minutes. They do not want RAW (Damn them). I send them jpeg, straight from the camera.
Worse yet, later I cull and keep only the best 10-20 RAW shots from a game. 1-2K other RAW photos go to the trash, and they go screaming.
And so it is with birthday photos of my kid, and similar. I use the jpegs, unless the photo is so good that a RAW edit is worth my time.
If and when this new format becomes available I will shoot.... RAW + JPEG. I am so sorry.

I've taken the first step, I've admitted I have a problem. Go easy one me.


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## Don Haines (Jan 23, 2014)

TexPhoto said:


> Forgive me Forum for I have sinned.
> I shoot RAW + JPEG. I am willing to admit that now. At sporting events my files must occasionally be emailed to editors within minutes. They do not want RAW (Damn them). I send them jpeg, straight from the camera.
> Worse yet, later I cull and keep only the best 10-20 RAW shots from a game. 1-2K other RAW photos go to the trash, and they go screaming.
> And so it is with birthday photos of my kid, and similar. I use the jpegs, unless the photo is so good that a RAW edit is worth my time.
> ...


My name is Don. (Hi Don!) I have been saving files as RAW and Jpeg... (Gasp!) I started doing Jpegs with an Apple Quicktake 100, then with a Kodak DC40, then with various Olympus P/S cameras.... At first 320x160 pixels was enough, then it had to be 400x300, then it was 756x504.... I just had to get bigger and bigger Jpegs for my jPeg fix... Now I need 18Megapixel jPegs to get high and it still isn't enough... sometimes I lock myself into a dark room and stitch together multiple images to try to get an even bigger jPeg fix.... One day a gorgeous lady seduced me to go Canon and introduced me to the hard stuff... RAW files. 

Now I am doing RAW and still can't give up my jPeg habit... I have tried to quit, but in the end I just bought a bigger hard drive and my jPeg habit is running wild.....

Picture: Cornwallis Island, near Resolute, Canadian High Arctic, taken with a Quicktake100...


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## ajfotofilmagem (Jan 24, 2014)

I have to confess my sin. ??? I also broke one of the 10 commandments of Canon Rumors. :-\ Yes, my brothers. I also shoot JPEG when I know I will have thousands of photos to deliver to my client the next day. :'( Yes, my fault. :-X But my clients want to JPEG, and I do not want to spend all morning RAW processing.  Now I know that I am ******* to eternal damnation, I would like to have a JPEG with better color depth, and lossless. : I'm going to hell, but I'll keep shooting JPEG when I find it convenient.  I was never sure of it, but before the Messiah to come to earth, everyone was *******, and no one saved his soul? At the time there was RAW, the images were not useful for anything?


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## IMG_0001 (Jan 24, 2014)

...By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
And between RAW and jpegs
you'll need to choose
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust on a sensor you will return.


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## pj1974 (Jan 24, 2014)

When I got my first Canon DSLR (about a decade ago) - I shot in JPEG, tried a few RAW - but as my standard software (ACDSee) didn't read RAW directly AND my PC was so slow in processing RAW, I stuck with JPEG.

Then a bit later I shot some more in RAW - and stayed with JPEG for most, but RAW for 'critical shots', eg tricky lighting, or to pull as my dynamic range from landscapes as possible, etc.

Later again, I decided I would shoot in RAW + JPEG, and discard all the RAWS that were not 'keepers' - so I viewed / kept most of the JPEGs, but each month I had a 'favourite subfolder' where I moved my 'favourite' RAWs to.

Nowadays I just shoot in RAW because:
a) the software I have used for the last number of years - DxO Optics Pro) - converts RAWs to JPEG (and at different resolution / qualities, as I set) and
b) my latest PC & Windows 8 is much quicker at displaying RAW photos.

I think RAW is the best format to 'keep' - as any enhancements in JPEG (or similar) will still rely on the RAW camera file. I am glad that Canon raw files don't apply image compression, noise reduction, white balance, etc, so I have total control of this post shot.

Paul


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## Badger (Jan 24, 2014)

I see at least one person is using DNG. It makes sense in theory but I still haven't pulled the trigger on DNG. 
In my mind, once I convert to .jpeg, I'm throwing something out (data) that in ten years from now, I might wish I still had. Heck, converting old RAW files today with LR yields better results than the original LR.
I have old .jpegs that I wish I had shot RAW, but I don't have any RAW files I wish I had shot .jpeg. I am probably more likely to go DNG before the new .jpeg, but even DNG is unlikely for now.


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## jpaana (Jan 24, 2014)

Technically Canon CR2 files already contain the sensor data compressed as 14 or 12 bit lossless JPEG


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## Sella174 (Jan 24, 2014)

My only question is why they didn't go the whole hog ... 16-bits per channel?


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## Albi86 (Jan 24, 2014)

Badger said:


> I see at least one person is using DNG. It makes sense in theory but I still haven't pulled the trigger on DNG.
> In my mind, once I convert to .jpeg, I'm throwing something out (data) that in ten years from now, I might wish I still had. Heck, converting old RAW files today with LR yields better results than the original LR.
> I have old .jpegs that I wish I had shot RAW, but I don't have any RAW files I wish I had shot .jpeg. I am probably more likely to go DNG before the new .jpeg, but even DNG is unlikely for now.



DNG is the typical "solution to a non-existing problem".


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## Sella174 (Jan 24, 2014)

Albi86 said:


> DNG is the typical "solution to a non-existing problem".



Or ... creating a problem where none exists.


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## Maui5150 (Jan 24, 2014)

My biggest question is why?

Now if the new JPG format will give me ALL the RAW data I have in half the space... then maybe I might be interested.

Until then I work with Raw, export to what ever format I need on the production end and have no worries.

If anything, I like the fact that I can give models or companies "proof" files that are JPG and they can not just blow them up, print them etc and have the same quality I have with that being processed off my RAW file.

Seems to me they are coming up with a 1536x864 as a Video Format.... Hey... We have DVD+... It is cool. It has more data and better image than DVD.

Ummm... But I already have Blu Ray... Does this hold more data or better resolution than Blu Ray?

No. But it is cool... It is better than DVD!

{Cue Crickets}


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## Ruined (Jan 24, 2014)

As long as the original JPG format had a mandatory "ignore data" or "comment" feature as most formats do, you'd be able to use this backwards compatible with a regular JPG only difference being size. Newer JPG software will look for the lossless data in this section, while older JPG software will simply ignore it.

i.e., in simple terms:

.JPG
[begin regular lossy 8bit data]
abcxyz
[start ignore data/comment flag]
[begin new 12bit/lossless data]
abcxyz123
[end new 12bit/lossless data]
[end ignore data/comment flag
[end regular lossy 8bit data]

An example of another format that did something similar to this is the audio format DTS, albeit in a more complex fashion.


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## Badger (Jan 24, 2014)

Wasn't the idea behind DNG to future proof files from old cameras since just about every new camera that comes out uses a different RAW format? 5 - 10 years from now, will LR or whatever we are using then still support my RAW files from my original Digital Rebel? I don't know how big a problem this is, but do we at some time, reach the point where the software has to support hundreds of different RAW formats? Again, all my files are still RAW, but I think about my old files regularly.

Keep in mind, I have Iomega discs that I can't pull data off any more, and a Digital 8 camcorder that can't connect to the latest Macs anymore


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## Sella174 (Jan 24, 2014)

Badger said:


> Wasn't the idea behind DNG to future proof files from old cameras since just about every new camera that comes out uses a different RAW format? 5 - 10 years from now, will LR or whatever we are using then still support my RAW files from my original Digital Rebel? I don't know how big a problem this is, but do we at some time, reach the point where the software has to support hundreds of different RAW formats? Again, all my files are still RAW, but I think about my old files regularly.



RAW files are data. A hundred years from now you can easily write a small program to convert the files to whatever other format. However ...



Badger said:


> Keep in mind, I have Iomega discs that I can't pull data off any more, and a Digital 8 camcorder that can't connect to the latest Macs anymore



Herein lies the true problem ... people not updating the *physical* media on which their data is stored. (BTW, as soon as CD-R became the norm, you should have transferred all the data from the ZIP disks to CD's; just like you must now transfer all CD's to DVD's; and so on into the future.)


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## Badger (Jan 24, 2014)

> RAW files are data. A hundred years from now you can easily write a small program to convert the files to whatever other format. However ...



That is what I'm asking. I personally can't write small programs 20 years from now to convert my Digital Rebel, 20D, and 6D RAW files. Are these programs actually small and so easy to write that I should have no fear and that someone will always be there to write or include those programs in their software? Do we ever get to a point where Adobe says enough already, your camera wasn't popular enough and we aren't going to support its RAW format? Or, you have had plenty of time to convert to DNG, we are are no longer supporting the Digital Rebel for example?

Understand that I'm not arguing one way or the other, I am just questioning my very own decision to keep everything RAW for now. BTW, is there a draw back to DNG? I never gave it a serious thought.


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## Sella174 (Jan 24, 2014)

Badger said:


> > RAW files are data. A hundred years from now you can easily write a small program to convert the files to whatever other format. However ...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



*dcraw* is open-source software, so all the information required to process 20D RAW files a hundred years from now will always be available ... unless ... but then there'll be nobody around to even care.

As to DNG, IMO there's nothing wrong with the format, but logically I see no reason to convert RAW files to another format for archival purposes.


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## Random Orbits (Jan 24, 2014)

Sella174 said:


> Badger said:
> 
> 
> > Wasn't the idea behind DNG to future proof files from old cameras since just about every new camera that comes out uses a different RAW format? 5 - 10 years from now, will LR or whatever we are using then still support my RAW files from my original Digital Rebel? I don't know how big a problem this is, but do we at some time, reach the point where the software has to support hundreds of different RAW formats? Again, all my files are still RAW, but I think about my old files regularly.
> ...



Except that CD-Rs relied on dyes that degraded over time... The CD-Rs I burned 10 years ago are no longer readable. Magnetic media is more reliable in the long run, but having mutiple copies is essential.



Badger said:


> That is what I'm asking. I personally can't write small programs 20 years from now to convert my Digital Rebel, 20D, and 6D RAW files. Are these programs actually small and so easy to write that I should have no fear and that someone will always be there to write or include those programs in their software? Do we ever get to a point where Adobe says enough already, your camera wasn't popular enough and we aren't going to support its RAW format? Or, you have had plenty of time to convert to DNG, we are are no longer supporting the Digital Rebel for example?



Companies will maintain compatibility until they see no value in it. The newest MS Word can't read Word files made in the 90s and at some point, Adobe or some other company may not see the point of being able to convert 20D files. At that point, we'll have to convert those original files into the next "standard", whether it's DNG or some other future format.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Jan 24, 2014)

Random Orbits said:


> Sella174 said:
> 
> 
> > Badger said:
> ...


I have no doubt that at some point in the future the software will put aside compatibility with RAW files from specific cameras . It may take 20, 30 years to happen , but it will happen. So , it seems prudent to save me apart from RAW , also another universal image format such as DNG , or JPEG . Businesses exist for profit , and archives of previous decades are not a priority for software companies . If you have technical knowledge to build your own RAW conversion software , you can rest assured . Otherwise, you may be a victim of planned obsolescence . If Microsoft itself no longer supports the old WORD files , why you believe Adobe or another company will eternally support files from a specific camera model ? As for the media , the programmed obsolescence tabém will ( at some point ) surprise people who believed in the durability and compatibility of media . Hard drives will also be obsolete someday, and we use SATA HD will be discontinued . When this happens , your files (all types ) can be accessed ?


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## unfocused (Jan 24, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> ..If Microsoft itself no longer supports the old WORD files , why you believe Adobe or another company will eternally support files from a specific camera model?



There is one significant difference however: WORD files simply preserve text. The words can always be recreated as long as there is a printed version somewhere. (The Bible didn't disappear when monks quit writing it out longhand).

Photographs are, of course, different. Not being able to read the files means losing the images. While it's no guarantee, it's going to be much harder to completely abandon certain file formats when millions of families' life histories are stored on that format. (Which of course means that jpg probably will have a lot better chance of being protected and preserved than RAW.)


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## Random Orbits (Jan 24, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> I have no doubt that at some point in the future the software will put aside compatibility with RAW files from specific cameras . It may take 20, 30 years to happen , but it will happen. So , it seems prudent to save me apart from RAW , also another universal image format such as DNG , or JPEG . Businesses exist for profit , and archives of previous decades are not a priority for software companies . If you have technical knowledge to build your own RAW conversion software , you can rest assured . Otherwise, you may be a victim of planned obsolescence . If Microsoft itself no longer supports the old WORD files , why you believe Adobe or another company will eternally support files from a specific camera model ? As for the media , the programmed obsolescence tabém will ( at some point ) surprise people who believed in the durability and compatibility of media . Hard drives will also be obsolete someday, and we use SATA HD will be discontinued . When this happens , your files (all types ) can be accessed ?



I don't believe that Adobe or any other company would provide support forever. However, companies tend to support new and old formats for a generation or two so that users can convert file formats. It is then that the files in the old format need to be converted something that will be good for another long while.

Yes, HDs will be obsolete someday, but the day is not today. What else can store so much data so cheaply and conveniently? Whenever its replacement arrives and HDs start to disappear, I'll move the files to the new media.


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## Badger (Jan 24, 2014)

> I don't believe that Adobe or any other company would provide support forever. However, companies tend to support new and old formats for a generation or two so that users can convert file formats. It is then that the files in the old format need to be converted something that will be good for another long while.



My thoughts exactly Random, question is when do we convert, and what do we convert too? Not going to lose sleep over it now, but these changes sneak up. 

I have an old LaserDisc player in the basement I'm not sure I can hook up to any of my current TVs anymore. (I know, this is different)


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## Sella174 (Jan 26, 2014)

Quite a few of you are confusing the issue ... RAW files are data and as long as you keep updating the physical media on which it is stored, you'll always be able to read it. If Adobe stops supporting RAW files from the 20D in the year 2156 or even next year, there'll _always_ be some other piece of software available to convert the data to the format of the day - then, not now. As an example, ImageMagick still supports the Dr Halo III file format, from the 1980's!


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