DXO’s indicates *“PhotoLab supports DNG format files as long as they have been generated by Adobe Lightroom, or Adobe DNG Converter, and as long as the original RAW format is also supported in the program. DxO PhotoLab”. The fact that other DNGs may open in PhotoLab successfully is besides the point.
Your Leica DNGs that open in PhotoLab 4 are not officially supported and if for some reason you had difficulty opening one or more of them, or you were unable to edit them properly, DXO would not be obligated to resolve those issues for you, even if as an accommodation they tried to address them.
I would not be surprised if some DNGs created by other software might also open in PhotoLab 4. However, the resolution of any issues while attempting to process them in PL4 would also not be supported by DXO. .
I must have a lousy memory - I’m repeating something I got involved in two years ago. Here’s the thread, and I am trying to update my existing version of Raw Therapy…
LesC - I found it and downloaded from the App Store.
Will I be able to open one of my Leica M8.2 images and change the EXIF data so PL4 thinks it is from a Leica M10 ? Or, is this just an alternate editor to use instead of Raw Therapee? I think the purpose for ExifTools is to allow me to change the file so PL4 will open it.
If RAW Power is just an editor, are there reasons why you and others prefer it?
I expected to have to buy it, but apparently it’s now free.
RAW Power can be downloaded as a trial from this site:
Note that exported images will be watermarked (no free lunch)
As far as I remember, the app is developed by former Apple developers from the Aperture team.
No, you have to download the trial from their website. But, from the screenshot of the App Store, it looks like you have already bought it, since the price of purchase is no longer visible.
In my opinion, this is not a particularly sophisticated editor, looking very much like Apple’s own Photos app in what it can do. Certainly no local adjustments, etc.
I’ve had `RAW Power’ installed for several years, but don’t use it that often, although it gets regular updates. I’m quite sure I had to pay for my copy (found my receipt: February 2017; €9.9). It was only when I read that Leica 8.2 could not be opened by PL4, that I checked whether any of my other tools could open such a file, and thus found out that your camera was supported. I’ve never had (or used) RAW Therapee.
I read through all the responses and some people seem a little mystified about why PL4 processes some things and not others.
RAW means RAW–the data directly recorded by the sensor. To properly convert this data into a sensible image requires knowing the physical and performance characteristics of the sensor.
A DNG file can be created so that the software does not need to know about the sensor (a “linear” DNG), but then the original RAW data is gone. By default, I believe the RAW data is retained, but according to this link, even in this case some is irreversably lost. It looks like PL4 can live with this little bit of loss, but it still needs to support the sensor from which the data came.
When a camera uses the DNG format as its native RAW form, nothing is missing, so PL4 can work with those (assuming its supported at all).
The features that disappear in PL4 when the file is not in its original RAW format are things where PL4 needs the original sensor data in order to do its magic.
If PL4 doesn’t support a camera, then if some other program can produce a TIFF, you can use it with PL4–but without the premium features.
No matter how you convert, all converters make some assumptions about how the image should be converted. Convert the same RAW file to TIFF using various different tools (all set to make zero adjustments) and the results will all be different.
The full FAQ entry says that they also support native (camera-created) DNG files.
There are a number of things that PL4 could open that they don’t. They don’t open Canon sRAW and mRAW files, for instance, because (despite the names) they aren’t actually RAW files. They could open RAW files for cameras that they don’t support (using one of the freely available RAW converter libraries). They could open a lot of image formats besides TIFF and JPG. It would be convenient.
I wouldn’t mind if they displayed a warning (that could be disabled) about the lack of full support, but DxO might still be worried about people getting confused and generating support requests.
Tonight I need to process four images taken with my Leica M8.2 with an old infrared filter on the front, hopefully go allow me to work on these images as infrared. If as I expect, PL4 won’t open them, then it’s on to something else, probably “Raw Therapy”.
Given my druthers, I would have preferred PL4 to open the files anyway, even if they needed corrections to compensate for the images having come from the Leica M8.2 camera. I guess that’s OK, the images I processed earlier today were all from my Leica M10, and I had no issues. I am almost certainly far from an “expert” at PL4, but at least I now feel comfortable working with it, and I try to avoid the mistakes I used to make.
Simply open the files in Preview, select all of them in the sidebar and go to File | Export selected images. go to the options button and choose your file type (TIFF?)
Once you have the exported files, open them in PhotoLab and work on them there. The only thing that won’t work is the RAW-only adjustments.
You bought a Mac, no need for fancy third-party software
That was my original plan, until I remembered Raw Therapee, which is specifically designed to edit infrared images.
For “regular” images, I think I will do as you suggested.
Deneice
(French photographer | PL5, Film Pack and NIK suite user)
39
It’s typically what I struggle for to make PL better because we should not asking ourself if a camera has support or no by opening its raw files into PL.
Just for your information I created a list for wishing support of unsupported raw here Wish list to support old raw files by DXO #photo archive matter and don’t forget to vote by clicking on the button “Vote” below the title.
I would like to think that if PL4 can open a TIFF image from my Leica M8.2, it should be able to open the DNG image - it apparently doesn’t do so, because it is blocked, by not being on the “approved” list. Even if nothing was corrected, no camera issues, or lens issues, and the image was not corrected like it could be for a camera that DxO understands, that (to me) is better than not opening it at all.
I’m not using the M8.2 camera lately, but I might be in the future. I no longer think about this, as I just convert the DNG images to TIFF.
Maybe DxO could open the images anyway, with a warning label that they are not corrected?
