Twenty years ago, I was just starting to make some headway as a film-shooting stock photographer. It was a fun time, but the digital age soon dawned. I shot JPEGs on maybe my first day out with a digital camera, and then I was onto RAW.
We all have been there at some point in our photographic journeys: Our cameras, set to AUTO, pointing and clicking, saving JPEG images that we perhaps edit a little and put in an album to archive. Maybe we throw on an Instagram filter to fancy it up for social media. Then we forget about these images for a while.
A DNG file is a high-quality image format that is quite common even though it's a relative newcomer compared to some file types such as the TIFF format, which is decades older (2004 vs 1986, respectively).
TIFF is a fairly common file type and is often requested by print agencies since it was made with printing in mind by a company that developed desktop publishing apps. TIFF has been around for a long time and is very versatile, handling black and white, various color spaces, such as CYMK, RGB, and even spot colors with ease.
An HEIC is a type of image file that contains compressed data, along with metadata such as the location a photograph was taken, the date it was created, and more. While it does reduce picture information, it typically results in a better representation of the original source than an image saved in JPEG format.
JPEG is, by far, the most popular image format for digital photographs and images in the world. An overwhelming majority of photos are stored and shared in this format, typically with a .jpg or .jpeg file extension, because it was a necessity of the early internet to keep file sizes smaller to enable faster transfer speeds.
Photographers have to deal with a variety of image types and new file formats appear from time to time, usually offering benefits that, while helpful, might not be immediately obvious. This can lead to frustration and hours lost when simply trying to complete a project. That's particularly true when a new camera or device saves images that can't be opened or edited in the normal workflow.
The creators of JPEG XL say the format can bring major changes to the popular JPEG such as large bandwidth savings and higher fidelity image quality with no conversion necessary -- JPEG XL still be read as a traditional JPEG.
The first preview of Android 12 has landed, and it brings news that the mobile operating system will have platform support for the AV1 Image File Format (AVIF), which has dramatically better image quality for the same file size when compared with image formats such as JPEG.
In running my photography channel, I get a lot of questions about RAW files vs. JPEG, and some people not fully grasping exactly what RAW files really are. So, I figured a box of cereal may simplify things. Read on.
A report by Digital Camera World earlier this week initially claimed that Canon was ditching JPEGs, replacing them with 10-bit HEIF files in the upcoming Canon 1D X Mark III, and possibly beyond. And while Canon eventually clarified that they are not getting rid of JEPG, the format may be (ought to be?) on its last legs.
Good news for iPhone and iPad users who are running low on storage space: Apple’s upcoming iOS 11 update will bring more efficient compression technology that the company estimates will save users up to 50% on storage needs.
Re-saving an image over and over and over again in a lossy format (a format like JPEG that tosses some data each time you save/compress the file) slowly but surely degrades the image. This is called generation loss, and it's demonstrated beautifully in these almost painful-to-watch YouTube videos.
Is it wise to convert your raw files to the Adobe DNG format? If you are using Lightroom or Photoshop with Camera Raw, you have the option to convert your master files to DNG. In this article I want to focus on the benefits of converting, the reasons why converting to DNG may not always be ideal or necessary, as well as tackle some of the misinformation about DNG.