The future of RAW

I'm new to shooting RAW and after doing some initial reading, there are some things that concern me about this "format".

RAW is proprietary. Each manufacturer has their own formats and even those formats can change. What happens to CR2 files when Canon changes to CR3? Can anything still process CRW files?

Camera makers don't publish RAW formats to 3rd party companies.

There is no RAW standard. Adobe is trying to introduce a DNG format, but nobody is buying into it.

RAW is not good for "archival storage". RAW files should be converted to TIFF files for that purpose.

Comments?

I do not know for a certain but I image CR3 will read CR2 just like Windows office 2013 can read Windows office 2000.

Another option - if it ever comes to a point where Canon cannot an older Canon file format - is to convert the file to DNG while using Adobe. Do that now, however, and Canon will not read DNG files.

Too bad they all don't get together and create ONE common file system, eh?

The flexibility RAW offers me in my post-processing far outweighs any fear of what the future holds for RAW. I'm sure there will be compatibility whenever it changes, nothing to really worry about.

Most RAW formats are propietary and not made publicly available by the companies, but they are not so complex to decipher and there will always be someone ready to reverse engineer them so that they can be opened on any RAW developer. If ACR V25 doesn't open today's CR2 files will be because Adobe doesn't want it to happen, not because of the amount of propietary RAW formats. Anyway, will future antivirus software forget about the first virus appearing in the world?. I think the same applies to RAW decoders.

This little (in size, the source code is 300KB) piece of software can read all existing RAW formats from the beginning of digital photography: DCRAW. And the code is written and maintained by a single guy, David Coffin.

No fear. Regards

Naturalist wrote in post #17180084
Too bad they all don't get together and create ONE common file system, eh?

But how can they create one common file system?

When a specific camera manufacturer releases a new body, they have made their best to have the raw files be as well suited to the abilities of that specific camera. If the file format is controlled by a big board of manufacturers - who would then see an incentive in adjusting this common standard so it works as well as possible for this manufacturers new body? The competitors most definitely wouldn't be too interested in having to invest own time in file format changes that isn't to their advantage.

Anyway - history have shown that old graphics formats "never" dies. The world has a large amount of software that can support conversion from hundreds of legacy image formats. And with the billions and billions of photos available in current Canon raw files, there is zero possibility that no one will see an economic incentive to step in and release a good alternative in case Canon stops to ship raw converters that supports the files and Windows/Mac technology moves ahead in ways that makes the current software not possible to run anymore.

Another thing to remember is that while the DNG format is open, the format supports vendor-private information to be stored. If that information isn't properly documented then there are no much difference from the current raw-conversion tools that to a large part have reverse-engineered the meaning of some of the vendor-private Exif tags and structures that Canon stores in their raw files. So if a Canon-supplied tool converts from a CR2 to a DNG, then it might just copy information that only Canon understands. And if the tool doing the DNG conversion is written by someone else, then it might miss (or have to intentionally skip) information from the CR2 file, or might have to copy it without any ability to understand what was copied.

So a move to DNG doesn't really make your photos any safer. Any software that understands all Canon-specific information in a DNG is likely to also understand that information from a CR2 file. And if the software doesn't understand CR2 files for the different Canon models, then it's likely that it also doesn't understand some of the extra Canon-specific information that might have been copied into the DNG file.

So in conclusion: don't worry about future support for CR2 files.

I have Minolta MRW files from 2002 that are still fully supported by the latest version of Lightroom although Minolta was long ago acquired by Sony. Also by UFRaw and probably any of the many converters based on Dave Coffin's DCraw. CRW files from the D30, D60, 10D and 300D are fully supported by Lightroom 5.6, Capture One Pro 8, and Canon's own DPP 3. The D30 files are also from 2002. I can't guarantee the future for you, but so far nobody is dropping anything. I think it is very unlikely that support will be dropped because once the hard work of decoding the file and profiling the camera has been done, it requires nothing more - dropping it would just be wasting that work.

I don't foresee Adobe going out of business soon and they will certainly continue to support it.

I couldn't disagree more. A single Raw file can be edited, interpreted and reinterpreted in a thousand different ways. Moreover, Raw conversion technology is still advancing and you may want to do new conversions of old files in the future. Raw is the ideal archive format and DNG is a little better for that than the maker's Raw. A tiff ties you into a single interpretation and being rendered and gamma corrected has less data and less flexibility for reediting than the Raw, unless you have the vast storage capacity for hundreds of thousands of multilayered tiffs that with today's cameras could easily be more than a gigabyte each.

Besides, how are you going to get a 16 bit, ProPhoto RGB tiff without going through Raw? That old Minolta, a dozen years ago, output tiffs, but I haven't seen a camera that will do so since.

tzalman wrote in post #17180107
That old Minolta, a dozen years ago, output tiffs, but I haven't seen a camera that will do so since.

My old Minolta did output uncompressed TIFF. So take a shot. Then talk with someone until the camera was ready for the next shot. 15 MB image files, but with 12-15 year older memory card technology. I'm way happier with the raw images I have from that camera.

I wouldn't choose tiff over Raw...sure, back in the "old days" it was nice to choose tiff over jpegs, but Raw changed the game as to the digital darkroom. The only "real" alternative as to image processing has been DNG and then some of the alternative Raw processors (and of course, DCRAW if you can handle it)...it's all fun, but of course we have to be serious about the digital darkroom and getting the "best" out of our photos!!!!!!!

This is a 15 year+ old debate. Over a decade later the answer is clear. RAW is here to stay and the 15 year old fear mongering of lost compatibility has yet to come to pass.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #17180616
This is a 15 year+ old debate. Over a decade later the answer is clear. RAW is here to stay and the 15 year old fear mongering of lost compatibility has yet to come to pass.

Well, then!!

Trying to introduce DNG? it was available a long time ago, today is exactly the 10th year anniversary.
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Digital_Negativ​e

I myself love it because I can toss it through multiple programs and not have to deal with compatibility, but honestly I've been using Jpegs more and more.

Wish cameras came in with a built in awesome raw processors, so it would just spit out already "custom" processed files. Then I'd just have to edit the jpegs in Photoshop. Even the ones they have now aren't that bad, the only time I need to shoot Raw is in low light or high dynamic scene, everything else the one inside the camera does great. Still shoot Raw + jpeg, but 99% of the time I don't need raw.

Zack Arias and David Hobby have also been shooting more and more jpeg only, go read their blogs.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #17180616
This is a 15 year+ old debate. Over a decade later the answer is clear. RAW is here to stay and the 15 year old fear mongering of lost compatibility has yet to come to pass.

+1

Even more so with the big players. If LR suddenly stopped supporting 10D files for instance, we'd know about it quickly enough to convert those raws to something else before completely removing old versions and going to new OS's. Or someone will come up with a converter - they are just binary files at the end of the day.

stevewf1 wrote in post #17180022
.....Adobe is trying to introduce a DNG format, but nobody is buying into it......

Doesn't Leica use the DNG format for their raw files?

This might be off topic... but are DNG & RAW the same thing? I mean, Does a RAW file contain what a DNG does and visa verca, or do you lose data from a DNG when converting a RAW into DNG?

DNG contains the original RAW data, plus metadata that describes how to interpret it. You can lose some metadata converting to DNG. DNG also supports compression, which means it wouldn't be the same as what came out of the camera.