Output File Size

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

@platypus

The good news is, that every version of an output file is unique - we’re not robots are we

Ah, reminds me of the good old days of hand printing in a darkroom with dodging, burning and de-spotting each time you want another print

[platypus (Canon & Mac (Intel and M1))]

Indeed. People like Ansel Adams (who also built his own enlarger) kept meticulous notes about how a print was made in order to be able to reproduce such prints. Today, we have sidecar files. Will our apps be able to read these files in a few years? Ah! Progress!

[jorismak]

@George

No. It’s stored just as bytes. That 16 figure is an adressing figure in the pc memory. On disk it’s stored as a list of bytes. Check your camera and set it on 12 bit. Read how many picture you can take. And now do the same with 14 bit. You’ll see a difference that wouldn’t be there if these values where stored in 16 bit integers.

Hmm… maybe some camera’s do that, I believe Nikons where you can choose freely between 12bit and 14bit. But I was more referring to how it was stored in a DNG, and there it’s basically always 16bit per pixel (and in files created from Adobe software almost always with lossless compression on top).
Most Canon’s always have some sort of compression in the RAW data, so you can’t compare (and you have to know which shooting modes use 12bit and 14bit), and on Sony’s for example if you choose ‘uncompressed’ it always writes 16bit files, even if only 12 bits or 14 bits are used.

Anyway, the point was to make clear what is actually inside a RAW file and why it increases in size as you demosaic it… and in doing so, a perfect example for explaining the differences between Raw data in a DNG and a Linear DNG.

If the data is actually 12bit, 14bit or 16bit per pixel in a file is not worth the debate. I explained why it wasn’t 48bit per pixel, as in a Linear DNG. That’s the reason why a Linear DNG (the output of PureRaw) increases in size: You are actually ‘trying to determine extra detail’ by debayering the RAW data.

Or in other words, Raw data is either R, G or B per pixel. A Linear DNG is demosaiced, so it has R, G and B per pixel. And in the case of x-trans it’s something else again , although it’s still a single value per pixel.

@platypus

My lessons learned: If drive space matters, don’t use DPR - or get more drive space.

I’m curious how drive space matters in this. Are you keeping the linear DNG files for archival or something? Because yes, that would fill up quickly. But it’s also like you’re saving a temporary in-between step of the editing process, and if software keeps improving over time you would want to do it again someday maybe, so you stored all the files for nothing? I would just store / archive the original files created by your camera. Anything else can be redone and only has the risk to be unusable at some time.

[platypus (Canon & Mac (Intel and M1))]

@jorismak

I’m curious how drive space matters in this. Are you keeping the linear DNG files for archival or something? Because yes, that would fill up quickly. But it’s also like you’re saving a temporary in-between step of the editing process, and if software keeps improving over time you would want to do it again someday maybe, so you stored all the files for nothing? I would just store / archive the original files created by your camera. Anything else can be redone and only has the risk to be unusable at some time.

Processing RAW files takes a long time, specially when DeepPrime is used on a computer with a graphic processor that does not help in the process. Under these conditions, you’d keep the DNG files as source for further changes in whatever application you’d use. Deleting that “new source” material will also remove all you did in post. You could keep the output files, but then you’d probably want to save under TIFF and JPEG to be ready for whatever could be needed in the future.

If you’re absolutely sure to be able to get the same results with each iteration, you can delete intermediate and output files - or a) accept to keep all files or b) re-do the original files with whatever variations come along in the recreation.