Lossy dng

[barryfitzgerald]

I've been experimenting with this and I'm quite impressed being honest. There are times that you might not need a full sized raw file, but want smaller file sizes. The space savings are huge v normal raw files.

And it's difficult to spot any differences from normal raw v the lossy ones. I can see very slight pixel differences at very very high magnification (very minor and not likely to be noted in print).
Lossy dng is a winner in my view. And yes I've made prints from lossy dng's and I can't tell the difference v uncompressed raw.

I know some will argue against it, I'm not saying I would use it for all work projects. But I'm struggling to see any notable differences for most work flow situations even low light shooting. Never been a dng fan much myself, but this is quite impressive really. It has practical and positive applications esp for higher volume work situations such as weddings and events. Yes you retain the ability to control NR, recover highlights and adjust WB just like a normal raw file. I think it's something many should check out.

[madmanchan]

The lossy-compressed DNG is also the internal format used for Smart Previews in Lr 5 Beta.  This makes it possible for folks to edit images (e.g., in Develop) while traveling with a laptop and a small drive, without having the (much larger) full-res images available.

[Vladimirovich]

I know some will argue against it

and why somebody must argue about DNG as one of intermediate formats for some workflow ? unless somebody wants to use that for archival purposes w/o retaining the original in-camera raw as written by a camera's firmware.

[barryfitzgerald]

and why somebody must argue about DNG as one of intermediate formats for some workflow ? unless somebody wants to use that for archival purposes w/o retaining the original in-camera raw as written by a camera's firmware.

Well I was working through my older files and some of them were uncompressed older MRW ones. I tried the lossless DNG and saved space and I could not detect any differences at all from the original raw files, so I converted them to DNG. On the lossy side of things, sometimes I don't really need the larger raw files out of camera. Lossy DNG seems like a good half way house, much small file sizes, hard to detect any real differences, and more flexible than jpeg for processing.

I have to admit I've never been a DNG fan from day 1 didn't see the point. With the increase in pixel density and accumulating more files over the years, I can see a place for it now. Of course a good clear out of shots you don't need also helps. But I'm quite impressed in the pixel peeping I've done it's really very difficult to tell the lossy DNG files from the original raw ones, noise pattern slightly different at very high magnification, not really much in it at all.