Camera Labs

I'm narrowing down my work flow and one thing I've been reading is converting to DNG. I know what DNG is but who all does this as there primary import or who imports and leaves in RAW.

Most of my work is done to publish on the Net so after I do my edits (mostly Lightroom) I export right to JPEG. For those few photos that need further work in Photoshop or I plan to do something like print, they go to TIFF out of lightroom then finish and save to what ever format I need from there. Anyone do anything different?

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Mike "The Squirrel"
Canon 550D | Canon EF 35mm 1:2 | Canon 50 f/1.8 II | Sigma 18-125mm DC OS | Tamron SP 70-300mm Di VC USD | Canon 430EX II
Military Issued Canon 40D | Canon 55-250mm IS

Although DNGs are usually smaller than RAWs, storage is relatively cheap nowadays, so I just leave everything in RAW format. But if you're sharing image files with someone else (say, burning them to DVD), I can see the advantage of having a smaller file size (and no sidecar file).

The only thing I do different from you is export from Lightroom as PSD instead of TIFF if I'm going to do further work in Photoshop.

Mark

What would be the difference from TIFF or PSD?

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Mike "The Squirrel"
Canon 550D | Canon EF 35mm 1:2 | Canon 50 f/1.8 II | Sigma 18-125mm DC OS | Tamron SP 70-300mm Di VC USD | Canon 430EX II
Military Issued Canon 40D | Canon 55-250mm IS

There may not be a difference in the end result; I just prefer to do as few format conversions as possible.

But that's just me - Mark

I had an incredibly bad experience while editing my first wedding last year where my Windows install ceased to boot due to some massive corruptions in my TIFFs I was working from. No viruses or anything like that, as I was able to remove the problematic TIFFs and the system worked as normal afterward. Needless to say, it was PSD from there on out.

However, I now avoid Photoshop like the plague because A) my exposures are far more consistent now and my processing in LR has improved immensely, B) I'm lazy and I like working in one piece of software as much as possible, and C) retouching is a soul-sucking endeavor.

PS - I only process RAW. The arguments for DNG conversion regarding lack of future file-type support of proprietary formats just don't stack up in my mind... It's not like one day someone will just come and take your older version of software away and make you replace it with something that doesn't support your RAW files. If support for CR2/NEF/etc. is really going to end, there will be some sort of heads up about it, giving you time to do all the converting you need to...

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Canon EOS 5D MkII | Canon EOS 7D | Canon Digital Rebel XSi | EF 35mm f/1.4L | EF 50mm f/1.8 II | EF 85mm f/1.8 | EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM | EF 135mm f/2L | EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS | 580EX II | LumoPro LP-120

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