Converting Digital Camera Raw Files to the Dng Format using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
I am a big fan of the Dng raw file format. Dng files hold all of their metadata internally without the need for separate external .xmp sidecar files. I believe that is a huge advantage over the proprietary, camera-brand specific, raw files that my digital camera creates. In my workflow smarter files are worth the extra step that it takes to turn a camera brand specific raw file into a Dng raw file. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom makes this conversion, this re-wrapping of the raw sensor data, super easy.
In Lightroom, we can shift most any brand of raw file into the Dng wrapper at the front-door as we empty our memory card.
Converts raw files to dng on import
We can also convert raw files that are already in our Lightroom catalog over to Dng using the Library > Convert to Dng feature.
Converts raw files that are in the Lightroom Catalog to Dng
Finally, we can create a new copy of a raw file outside of Lightroom using the File > Export dialog and selecting the Dng file format.
Converts a copy of a raw file outside of Lightroom to Dng
Watch this tutorial video for more on the advantages of Dng and on how easy it is to use this advanced file format with Lightroom.
Click here for more information on the Dng file format from Adobe or here for a great article on this file format’s advantages from the ASMP’s dpbestflow project.
Filed Under: (03) Importing • (07) Exporting • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
I am using JOBO photoGPS in LR3. Although all photos are tagged, I do not see GPS in EXIF but see the name of the area I photographed in Keyword section. The photos are converted to DNG and do not open by Google Earth.
Dear Parviz Pour,
I am afraid that I have no experience with the JOBO photoGPS system. Can you see the GPS data for these files using other software like the Adobe Bridge? Also, I would not expect to see the DNG files on Google Earth. DNG is a raw digital image format. Google Earth uses the gpx or kml formats for its data.
For better advice I would check with Lightroom -> GPS master Jeffery Friedl.
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David Marx
Hi David,
I have followed your tutorial and converted cr2 files to drg in Lightroom.
For now, my photos reside in the Mac hard drive.
My question is: after I have converted them to drg, they are still cr2 in iPhoto. Where am I storing my drg?
Thanks, Dan
Dear Dan Moore,
The files that you converted from cr2 to dng probably live in the folders where the cr2 files used to be. Perhaps a better way of saying this would be to state that you have simply re-wrapped the old files with the new ones that carry the .dng extension. This is a guess since there three ways to convert from cr2 to dng using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. If you did the conversion on export then the new files might live someplace totally different…
iPhoto is storing a completely separate copy of your .cr2 files no matter what you have done in Lightroom. iPhoto and Lightroom are completely separate and they do not speak the same “language.” The files thqt you originally imported into iPhoto are inside the iPhoto Library package contents.
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David Marx
David,
I just bought a Pentax K5 and plan to import DNG, produced directly by the K5, into Lightroom. A K5 DNG file is about 22-24 MB. When I convert with the Adobe RAW to DNG Tool the size shrinks to about 17-18 MB. That is about 5 MB smaller or more than 20%. Is there any reason for not doing this DNG to DNG conversion? Or should I do PEF -> DNG?
-Marcel
Dear Marcel Tan,
Remapping the Pentax DNG to an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom DNG is a good idea. They are both the same format but Pentax is not using Adobe’s latest file technology. The reduction in file size is just one of the subtle differences between the latest DNG version and the older version that is used within your camera.
I don’t have a Pentax so I cannot be certain but I believe that the PEF files are even larger than the camera generated DNG images. If my suspicion is correct, and if you are not using any other software program for raw file enhancements, then I can’t see any advantages to recording new images in the native PEF format. Other than file size though I cannot see any harm in shooting PEF and then converting to Adobe’s latest DNG implementation when your files are Imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
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David Marx
HI
I have an interesting one that I am trying to solve well at least for my workflow it is.
Let me start by saying that DNG is the format I want to use, but here is the catch and problem I’m trying to solve.
I outsource my color correcting so it makes sense to send this to my vendor as Nikon Nef files. This helps because they then only need to email the xmp files back to me. So far so good easy process. Noe this is were it gets tricky and I am not even sure it can be done. I wan to convert my Images to DNG, but the catch is I do not want to keep all the old XMP info. I want to inbed the color corrections to a point that after conversion and reimporting to LR if I hit the reset button it resets to the imported DNG with color corrections and NOT to the original out of camera XMP. The reason I wan to be able to do this is that in a studio with lots of staff I know that at any time we can RESET and still have color neutral images acroo the board. I know we can use the history tab but it is so much easier to hit reset. For eg if one of my staff is prepping images from a wedding and applying presets to a bunch of images, if i Check it before it goes out to a client and I don’t like the preset chosen I can simple hit the reset button and start again for the Colour corrected DNG. Hope this makes sense and that there is someone out there that can help.
Rob
Dear Robert,
I don’t know of any easy and efficient way to make the Reset button take you back to anything other than the original image capture settings. You might be able to find an adequate alternative using the snapshots feature. I can envision a routine where Jeffery Freidl’s Snapshot on Export Plug-in speeds this workaround up but its not a direct solution to your troubles.
Best of luck,
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David Marx
Hi, I am new to lightroom and just started using Lightroom 3. I am well aware of DNG and this is my preferred file format. However, when I first imported files into lightroom for the first time I couldn’t spot how to convert them into DNG on import and have since been doing some alterations with the CR2 files and adding keywords etc for the metadata in ‘Develop’. Can I still convert these now altered files into DNG or will the alterations made be lost?
Dear Laura Abbott,
You can change your CR2 files to DNG at any point within Lightroom. Check out the second video tutorial in this post.
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David Marx
Davis,Great tutorial. I just found it as a result of seeking a solution to my inability to convert more than one photo at a time although I have all the images in a folder selected.
LR 4.1 and CS6. I thought I had done this before in LR 3 but ..?
I inadvertently imported a shoot as CR2 although I do usually use copy as dng
Will apprecaite if you can reply.
ed Law.
Wow ! How Can I say u THANKS ! THANKS ! THANKS ! THANKS ! THANKS ! THANKS !THANKS !THANKS !THANKS !
Hello David, your suggestion is what I did, but in lightroom I see after importing in the right top of the picture DNG+JPEG and on my hard disk I see both files. So lightroom combines it in the programme but has both files on the harddisk.
The reason I like to know this is that the Leica x1 can not make only dng, it is always both, jpeg and dng. How to avoid that I import both. the treat jpeg files next to raw files doesn’t help.
I have a nikon d90 and a leica x1 and a I am a new user of lightroom 3. How can I only import the dng file of the camera. It looks that both files always will be imported together, the jpeg and the dng. How can I avoid that, so only the raw/dng files are imported.
Dear Bernard,
In your Lightroom preferences menu turn off the option to “treat Jpeg files next to raw files as separate photos.” Basically this preference switch tells Lightroom to import both the raw and the jpeg copy of the same shutter click. I advocate turning this switch on for most users but for you turning it off might be the way to go. I figure that if you asked the camera to make you two copies of each shutter click then you must have a reason why you need both files and you will probably want to have both copies inside of your computer.
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David Marx
No need to convince me on the superiority of raw over .jpg. The only reason I used to shoot in both raw and .jpg is that Windows does not show a thumbnail but only a cr2 icon for the raw files. I never used the camera generated jpg files for anything but seeing what the raw files contained. I say “used to” since, now that I have Lightroom, I can see what is in the raw files without opening them and I have set my camera to only shoot raw (bonus – more pictures on the card!). Eventually, though, to display or share the photos, I have to convert them to .jpg.
My beef with camera raw is that it opens the files with a set, though customizable (thanks for your tutorial on camera raw profiles), profile. I wish that, instead, it would take a better guess, based on the file itself, of what settings would be required to render the photo properly. For example, I took a photo of our cottage after some renovations looking upwards from down a hill. When the file was opened in camera raw, the display showed the sky blown out white and the soffits black. When I darken the photo, blue sky and small whispy white clouds are revealed. When I lighten the photo, the details of the soffits can be seen. My point is that the details are all there but, on opening, camera raw does not show them. I have read in many places that the human eye can process a higher dynamic range than camera sensors. While this may be true, I don’t think it is as true as one would think by opening pictures in camera raw. My eye sees the sky and the soffits but so does the camera sensor. It is just the software that is not showing them without a whole lot of work. I am not talking about artistic emphasis or de-emphasis of certain parts of the image, which I agree can make an enormous difference to the appeal of a photo. I am just talking about seeing everything that is there. Not only that, but it takes me a lot of work to get it right. I suppose I need more practice but I am hoping that the superior raw editor that comes with Lightroom will make it easier than with Canon DPP and the Elements version of Camera raw.
Thanks again for your responses.
Scot
David,
That is reassuring about there not necessarily being any inherent problem with the set-up I plan to use. I have, in fact, as you suggested, downloaded Lightroom and am trying it out. So far, with the help of your tutorials, it is going very well.
One thing I read about that is a real selling point for Lightroom is that its raw file editor is better than the one in Elements. I must say I find it frustrating that the full dynamic range of the raw files does not find its way onto the screen without a whole lot of adjustment. With 4 stops plus and minus, there are details in the pictures that don’t display on the screen or get translated into the jpgs without a whole lot of work. I think raw file editing is still a bit of a weak link in the digital photography world so a better raw editor is worth spending some money on.
Thanks for all your help.
Scot
PS, awesome ski photos!
Dear Scot Diamond,
Thanks for the compliments! I am glad that we got most of your questions answered. Not to beat a dead horse but I would respectfully suggest that you are looking at the raw conversion issue backwards. Raw files are like unprocessed film whereas jpegs are like Polaroids. In the hand’s of a talented artist the raw file is so much more useful then the camera generated jpeg. Give me the raw file and I will give you a better, more expressive, more satisfying image then I could ever get out of my camera in jpeg mode.
For me Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the tool of choice for this process but the other advantage to raw is that you can try interpreting the same file with a variety of applications. Unlike film, which could only be chemically processed once, raw files can be interpreted again and again! You have got to love this designed flexibility and the freedom to rework our best images again and again as our skills, and artistic tastes, change.
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David Marx
David,
Thanks for your response. So do I understand correctly that if I use the option “Embed Original Raw File” the .dng file essentially carries around inside it the whole original .cr2 file in addition to the copy of the copy of the sensor data the .dng file uses and the non-destructive edit instructions that would otherwise go in a sidecar file? Also, if you want to extract the .cr2 file back out, maybe to use some of the functions that Canon Digital Photo Professional might that Adobe Camera Raw does not, you can not build as well the sidecar file containing the edits that were done in Lightroom?
As for the backup system being complicated, it will be no different than it is now. All pictures are in subdirectories of a single directory on the external drives, each drive being an identical copy of the other and one being in the city and the other off-site at the cottage. The recent photos on the laptop are merely an extract of the entire set – I have too many pictures to keep them all on the laptop. I synchronize the extracted files on the laptop with the external drives regularly with Allway Sync. If I were to edit an older file, I would first bring the directory in which it resides into the extracted set on the laptop and sync that directory as I do the other extracted ones. My edits will thus always be done on the laptop. I do not know how else to sync the two hard drives and, in principle, do not think it makes sense to bring the city drive to the cottage every weekend since I would not have the benefits of an off-site back-up on the weekends. If the cottage burns down on the weekend, I could lose the laptop plus both drives. If you can suggest a better alternative, I would be interested.
But back to my original question, in your tutorial on getting started right, you say that there will be problems down the road unless you set yourself up with the catalog on an external drive together with the photos. I am not sure what kind of trouble is in store but is my proposed set-up not going to work with Lightroom? Lightroom is an awfully expensive program and I really do not want to buy it unless it is going to work with my set-up.
Thanks again.
Scot
Dear Scot Diamond,
You are right about the dng file, with the “embed original raw file,” basically containing two files– the dng copy, and the proprietary copy, plus the file’s metadata within a single shell. You are also right that your Lightroom adjustments to the image’s appearance will have no effect on an extracted copy of the original sensor data. Your backup system sounds great too.
Perhaps I misspoke, or gave the wrong impression in my tutorials, there is no rule that says that your Lightroom catalog and your images must live on the same drive. Many photographers, including the other founder of this site Mr. Scott Rouse, prefer to keep their images on one disk and their catalog on another. Scott argues that there are performance advantages to this setup. I, on the other hand, find it awkward and cumbersome. That’s what makes Adobe’s professional grade applications so interesting. There is no single system, or right answer, that fits every single photographer’s needs.
My advice for you is to try the free 30-day trial with a selection of images. See if you like Lightroom before you spend the money. Maybe even try it and some of its competitors so you can make a purchasing decision based on personal experience.
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David Marx
1. If .dng files contain the raw image data plus other metadata, it ought to be possible to convert a .dng file back to the proprietary raw format and a sidedcar .xmp file. That way, editing would still be possible with the manufacturer’s raw editing program. Is it necessary to keep the .cr2 file to not burn that bridge?
2. The reason I am interested in lightroom is that I read that the catalog contains a full screen sized version of the pictures which can be viewed even if the drive containing the actual picture is not connected. I intended to keep the catalog on the laptop together with full versions of recent photos but keep older photos only on 2 separate external drives, one of which is in town and the other at the cottage. The advantage for me is that I can edit recent photos without connecting the external drive (which is a nuisance) yet scroll through all my photos (rapidly apparently). The first tutorial on this site, however, advises that there are problems later on in Lightroom unless you put the photos and the catalog on the same external drive. Is there a problem in setting myself up as I had planned? Is it not true that Lightroom handles photos well regardless of where they are stored? If so, I am not sure why I need Lightroom at all.
Thanks.
Dear Scot Diamond,
It is possible to extract the proprietary raw file back out of the dng container if you turn on the Embed Original Raw File preference switch before converting. I don’t usually advocate this because it substantially increases the file size but it does give you the luxury of extracting the proprietary file back out if needed. Changes made with the manufacturer’s software would effect the extract file but these would have no effect on the dng file. Likewise, your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom changes will have no effect on the extracted copy :<.
Keeping the .cr2 is a good idea if you think that you will use software that cannot handle the dng copy. Since I don't use any software, other than Lightroom for my raw file conversion, I don't see any point to keeping the propreitary raw file but that's just my opinion. Many other professional photographer's would disagree especially if they paid for a sophisticated camera / raw conversion system like those available from PhaseOne.
Your goal, in question 2, is a good one. It is true that Lightroom stores its own thumbnail for every photo that you add to your index. It is also true that Lightroom can work with multiple drives. Your backup system will be quite complicated though with files here, there, and everywhere. Also, you will find that Lightroom cannot make any develop module changes to files that are "offline." You can browse for files on a drive that is not currently connected. You can add metadata to the catalog about these files but you cannot change their appearance in the develop module.
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David Marx
Really appreciate all the good info here, thanks! I am also new to Lightroom and am absorbing as much as I can before diving in (yes, I’m one of those people). That last question about JPEGs reminded me of my situation. I just recently purchased a new DSLR setup and now shoot in RAW plus JPEG (on a separate card), but I have thousands of photos going back to my first digital camera, an Olympus C5050. While it has the capability to shoot in RAW, I rarely did, so I plan to import all my old photos that are JPEGs. Would it make sense to have them organized within LR in a different way, since as you mention, I’m limited with what I can do with them?
Any suggestions there would be appreciated.
Bill
Dear Bill,
Kudos to you for doing you research before jumping into the software. You are asking a good question here and one where there is no absolute right or wrong answer. If I were you I would make, one and only one Lightroom catalog, and use it to index both your old Jpegs and your new Raw files. I don’t see any reason to treat these files differently or to divide them up. I often shoot in Jpeg and I even have some .Tif files from my film scanning days. These files live side-by-side with my Raw files in Lightroom and I search through all of my images using metadata. I use the same keywords and metadata template regardless of the file format.
Not every Lightroom expert will agree with me here though. I am big believer in keeping things simple. By using the same catalog, and the same organizational system, for all of my files I can find anything and everything that I need in a single search. If you divide things into separate catalogs then searching gets more complicated.
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David
I am new to lightroom. I have an extensive archive of both my raw images, as well as the jpegs created from the raws through Canon’s DPP. When I do my initial import (wanting to do it soon obviously), should I only import the raws and convert them to dng, or should I also import the jpegs? Thanks for your assistance.
Joe,
That decision is up to you. I’d encourage you to just import the raw files (converting them to DNG if you desire). If you import the JPEG files, as well, you’ll have a great number of confusing duplicates to deal with in Lightroom.
The down side to my suggestion is that, if you’ve made favorable corrections to those raw files before converting them to JPEG, you’ll lose the changes you’ve made by just importing the raw files. If there are a few images which have received lots of editing, you could choose to import those alongside their raw companions.
In the end, however, the files which will prove the most useful and flexible for you in Lightroom will be those in the raw format. Lightroom reads and works with JPEG files just fine, but there’s much less data contained in those files limiting the amount of editing you can safely do on them.
-Scott
Dear Bennie,
You can follow us on twitter here. Good luck with your homework.
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David
Hi admin , This is interactive article for my homework from school Do u have twitter account ?? i want to follow your twitt . Good bye
thank u very much, Dave!
Dear Lisa,
This is confusing stuff and you are on the right track. Metadata is any textual information added to a digital image.
By converting to the Dng file format this textual information– your copyright for example–can be stored along with the raw sensor data inside of each file. Raw files in proprietary, meaning camera brand specific, formats cannot hold this sort of text internally. Since they can’t store the info internally these files need a sidecar xmp file, think of it as a post-it note, to hold important information.
This internal vs. external metadata storage is a property of the file’s themselves regardless of what image management software you use. What makes Lightroom special is that it builds a searchable index for your photography.
For every file– meaning every photo–that is added into your index Lightroom creates an “index card.” Each “index card” records the file’s name, it’s location on your hard drive, all of it’s metadata, and a couple of thumbnail-sized copies of the image.
Searches in Lightroom produce almost instantaneous results because the catalog keeps its own records about your images. (See Lightroom vs. Adobe Bridge for more details.) Not only does the catalog produce instant search results but it can also store information that is not part of the file’s metadata. Features like the pick / reject flags, collections, and virtual copies are all stored only at the catalog level. There in’t a metadata field for the name of a collection or for a virtual copy.
What I am trying to say is that we need the catalog for two reasons: a, fast searches even if the file’s themselves are offline and b: to store features of the program that cannot be written into a file’s metadata.
I hope this helps,
David
thank u David,
what i understand here is Catalog= metadata, DNG= metadata+photo. so if we have both metadata and photo in DNG file, why we need Catalog to record the metadata? sorry to confused u :d
Dear Lisa,
I am not sure that I understand your question. This tutorial is all about how to shift your raw files into the dng format within Lightroom. You would only use the “Import as Catalog” feature if you were combining one catalog into another. Why and where are you using this option in your routine?
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David
thank u for this great explanation on dng files. my question is if the dng already contain all the metadata, do we still need to import as a catalog? can we just convert to dng?
Micheal W Gray published this excellent article on DNG conversion recently on the X-Equals blog.
Grant Gunderson, one of my favorite photo editors / publisher, is now accepting “Dng raw files” with “meaningful metadata” only for consideration in his magazine The Ski Journal. I believe that we will soon see similar rules from all of the topflight publishers. Click here to see The Ski Journal’s complete submission guidelines.
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David Marx
Interesting issue, Andrew. If you’re experiencing the problem from the Finder as well as directly from the camera, then, you’re right, I’m sure it’s not the direct camera import that’s the issue.
I prefer DNG anyway, but I know it’s frustrating when things don’t work the way they should.
-Scott
Scott, I’ve been importing directly from the camera. I assumed the problem was not related to this as transferring NEF files around in Finder also causes the same problem to arise. As I say, now that conversion to DNG format seems to have resolved the issue I’ll stick to that format and ditch the NEF files once converted. That said, I’ve heard from other sources that a card reader is more reliable than the a direct import from the camera and I think I’ll use one from now on to be on the safe side.
Thanks,
Andrew
@Leslie:
Thanks for you comment. As a teacher, I keep a lot of my mistakes, as well. However, I see students time and again who have unmanageable catalogs due to the sheer volume of mediocre images. One of the most frequent mistakes made by amateurs when showing their work is that they flip through image after image of bad shots muttering the mantra “Ok, there’s a good one coming up here somewhere…”
Anyone who’s sat through a slideshow of someone’s vacation pics can attest to that!
@Andrew:
I’ve not run into that issue before. Were you importing straight from the camera or were you using a card reader? Although an import with the camera plugged directly into the computer should work, I always recommend using a memory card reader. They are typically much faster and can reduce the (already low) likelihood of damage to your camera from a USB power issue.
-Scott
I have a NIkon D80 and for the last six months when importing images in NEF format to my Mac through Lightroom 2.x or Finder after around 10% have been imported the computer freezes indefinitely and would not allow a forced quit. That corrupted the Lightroom database and meant retrieving the backup. The work around was to only import a very small number at a time – tedious.
This morning, before calling Apple again(!) I tried converting to DNG on import and bingo, no problem. Has anybody else experienced this problem on a Mac with NEF files? I think I’ll stick to DNG in the meantime though!
I don’t agree that you should only keep your best photos. I love looking at my bad photos because I can see how I’ve grown and / or what didn’t work. Also, if I ever want to create a book on how to photograph, it’s nice to have examples of what didn’t work, or progression of how the shoot went. In addition, some photo’s I take of my dogs, family, vacation may not be works of art, but have great memories.
I have read of photographers having another catalog that is just their best takes. That may be a good option so you don’t have the outtakes cluttering up the final picks in a catalog.
I do of course edit out the really bad, totally blurred, over/under exposed, etc.
That’s my 2 cents.
Bettie,
Yes, as long as the Automatically Write Changes to XMP checkbox is checked (or you save changes to your files), the metadata is written to the DNG file. No more sidecar files.
For me, it’s certainly the best solution.
-Scott
So when you make any changes to the metadata, it is updated in the DNG file format? This all seems much more simple and organized than the CR2 format. I have lost edits because of sidecars not getting written or not exporting properly. I am nearly convinced this is the best route to go…
Kudos, Mike, for being aggressive in deleting those rejects. A good photographer not only takes good photos, but keeps his or her collection of images pared down to only the best.
-Scott
PS-I’m not that great at it yet. I could use some work on narrowing down my library!
DNG all the way for me. Although, I do have Lightroom keep a copy of the original RAW files in a separate folder I have never had to go back to those files. Knowing I have that backup lets me be extra aggressive when rejecting photos out of my catalog (I tell LR to delete them off the filesystem as well).
One big negative for me with DNG is that the XMP data is written into the file rather than existing as a sidecar.
Here’s why: every time I change anything that gets written to XMP, that means the whole file has changed. And it slows my regular backups to network locations down tremendously. There is quite a difference between backing up a few hundred kilobytes in an XMP sidecar vs. 25MB in a 5D MkII DNG file.
I don’t have any problem keeping the XMP files sync’d with the originals: I don’t rename the files in the filesystem (I don’t care what they’re named) so that probably helps a lot.
I tried using DNGs for a while and I still get hit by this when I tweak my keyword system (it’s a forever-evolving system) and keywords get updated in those DNGs from that time.
Maybe I’m crazy but I trust Adobe and don’t even bother with Nikon’s CaptureNX software. I exclusively use Lightroom and convert to DNG on import and discard the original RAW/NEF files.
Perhaps it’s because I’m not a pro, but I always use the original RAW files. Although I use Lightroom to manage my library, the camera vendor’s supplied viewing software provides additional EXIF information that that is useful in determining why a shot was spectacular – or not. For example, more details can be found in the RAW file regarding AF, AE, image stabilization, and flash information.
When I first got my Nikon D90 I couldn’t read my RAW files in any program for several months because it wasn’t yet supported.
Annoying and scary.
I convert everything to DNG now and delete original raw files… The future is much more likely to support the large universal standard of DNG than a camera specific Nikon D90 RAW .nef file.
Yeah always.
ONLY because it produces a smaller file than my Sony A350′s RAWs (about 1MB smaller)
Dick,
I’ll chime in on this one and say that I agree with David. I don’t ever plan on needing to go back to the “original” raw out of the camera, so I discard it after creating a DNG version.
There’s no right or wrong, though. You’ll find many different (heated) opinions on this.
-Scott
Dear Dick F,
This is a personal choice. In my workflow, I do not store a copy of the original raw file in its proprietary (camera branded) file format anywhere. This makes life easier for me, but not all professionals will agree on this one.
If you only keep the dng file then you have cut yourself off from software that doesn’t work with dng. This means that my dng raw files will not work with the Canon Digital Photo Pro, Nikon NEF / Bibble, etc. This could be a big negative for some folks.
Personally, I am thrilled with Lightroom and ACR for all of my raw conversion needs. I don’t feel like I need any of these other programs, but again not everyone will agree.
David
When you import in Lightroom, do you keep a copy of the original raw file somewhere, or are you depending on the dng files for everything?