Lightroom cannot handle DNG files. Why?

[JDClements]

When using external editors, Lightroom can only work with PSD and TIF files. Why is that? It seems odd to me that it can't pass and receive DNG files, or am I missing something?

[wolfnowl]

Are you sure it's not your editor that can't work with .dng files?  Photoshop for example doesn't write to raw files.

Mike.

[JDClements]

DxO Optics can work with DNG files, then import the result into Lightroom. You can also pass a DNG from within LR to DxO, but it will return a TIFF. I asked them why, and their response was that it was a limitation of Lightroom: It can only return PSD or TIFF files from external editors.

It seems like a strange limitation to me.

[NikosR]

DxO Optics can work with DNG files, then import the result into Lightroom. You can also pass a DNG from within LR to DxO, but it will return a TIFF. I asked them why, and their response was that it was a limitation of Lightroom: It can only return PSD or TIFF files from external editors.

It seems like a strange limitation to me.

LR can only pass non-raw files to external editors. That was a design decision in LR AFAIK. DxO 'tricks' LR and gets the original raw file from it but this is not an officially supported LR operation.

[digitaldog]

DxO Optics can work with DNG files, then import the result into Lightroom.

Ah but is this rendered data inside the DNG or Raw data? I seriously doubt DxO is handing off anything but rendered data (how could Lightroom understand whatever proprietary processing metadata Dx0 produced and use it within the LR engine?).

A DNG isn't necessarily a digital negative unfortunately, despite the name.

[NikosR]

Ah but is this rendered data inside the DNG or Raw data? I seriously doubt DxO is handing off anything but rendered data (how could Lightroom understand whatever proprietary processing metadata Dx0 produced and use it within the LR engine?).

A DNG isn't necessarily a digital negative unfortunately, despite the name.

It is RGB data in linear DNG format

[digitaldog]

It is RGB data in linear DNG format

Then its not Raw data but rendered data.

[NikosR]

Then its not Raw data but rendered data.

Of course