PS CS3?

Hi

I have recently bought a Canon 5D. My copy of Photoshop CS will not open the RAW files produced by this camera without the files being converted to DNG format first. I am tempted to buy PS CS2 as I like some of they other features that it has. However, I don't want to buy the software to find that it will shortly be superceded by CS3. Does anyone have any idea when it will be released?

Mike

CS3 should be released soon. I heard that it will have a new interface.

According to Adobe sometime Q4 2006- Q1 2007 for CS3
Mark
--
http://www.digitalcamera.netfirms.com http://www.markphoto.co.uk

Mike ...am holding back on CS for a different reason but converting to DNG then onto tiff or jpeg is that not the way forward ? have heard this is what we should all be doing to retain the integrity of the original digital file ..or am I confused lol
All best
Greg

You are correct... I mean.. who knows what the future will hold.. but DNG's appear to be hear to stay.. I will be converting all my RAW's to DNG's then on to JPG post processing. Seems a viable way to maintain the originals and you always have the JPGs in any event.. Besides you will always be able to use converters to converrt the dng's to whatever the new fangled way of the future will be.

The main reason for me to use DNG is that ACR can store its settings in the DNG file instead of a sidecar file or database.

And if you want you can always store your original RAW file in the DNG file and extract it later when needed.

Kees.

I read on some apple forums and on digg - CS3 is targeted for Q3/Q4 '06.

I'm a new user of 5d and I also have CS, I use alt-p in dpp that come with the 5d to open raw image in CS ! That work for me !
--
If you find my english wrong... you are right !
But my photos are right, see them, critique them !
http://www.photo.net/photos/denisbergeron

First, Photoshop CS3 is waiting on Windows Vista. Vista offers a lot for Photographers with a much, much more robust color and graphics engine. It changes a lot. Also, it provides a new framework for a much improved GUI.

Second, DNG - look into it. You "may" be loosing a fair amount of camera specific information along with your conversion to DNG. There is a reason that the camera manufacturers are not behind it. The reason is that it does not do everything they think it should. Conversion to DNG can loose image quality - if this is a concern to you.

Third, Bibble, the RAW conversion program, is a replacement for Adobe Camera Raw in that it can also be a Photoshop Plug-in. It does a superior job to ACR and is much, much faster. Of course you get native Canon 5D support through it as well.

Hope this helps.
--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net
http://www.focusstudios.com

Peter Sills said:

First, Photoshop CS3 is waiting on Windows Vista. Vista offers a
lot for Photographers with a much, much more robust color and
graphics engine. It changes a lot. Also, it provides a new
framework for a much improved GUI.

Click to expand...

Yes, Vista brings a few new things to the table for photographers; however, Adobe already does all of their color management internally, so why would they split the code of their Mac and Win versions now to take advantage of Vista's features, when their current color management code seems to work just fine? Needless to say, I'd like to see the CS apps follow a Windows-style GUI on Windows more closely, but Adobe seems to take a couple of releases to catch up (witness the PS version that came out right around when XP did, versus the one that came out some time after that).

Member said:

Second, DNG - look into it. You "may" be loosing a fair amount of
camera specific information along with your conversion to DNG.
There is a reason that the camera manufacturers are not behind it.
The reason is that it does not do everything they think it should.
Conversion to DNG can loose image quality - if this is a concern to
you.

Click to expand...

Not grabbing all of the metadata I can understand, but can you provide any proof of the loss of image quality upon DNG conversion? That is, as in sample images showing this loss of quality, not the ramblings of some random person who has a thing against Adobe.

Member said:

Third, Bibble, the RAW conversion program, is a replacement for
Adobe Camera Raw in that it can also be a Photoshop Plug-in. It
does a superior job to ACR and is much, much faster. Of course you
get native Canon 5D support through it as well.

Click to expand...

I've heard lots of good things about Bibble... with the integrated noise removal, it sounds like it brings plenty of features to the table without a loss of performance to do so. Definitely will be worth checking out.

With Photoshop you can use either their color management or the built-in Windows engine today. However, there is no reason today to use the Windows one as the Adobe one is so much better. I am not sure if this will stay the case in Vista - however, the Windows one will have some advantages to viewing images across systems - given that it is native.

As for DNG, I LOVE Adobe! I just think that they got this one wrong. Instead of creating a format and trying to establish it as a standard without really working with the camera manufacturers, they should have developed a format WITH the manufacturers. There is a great deal of proprietary information in the RAW files of many of the cameras out there. This will not come through the DNG conversion (though you have the option of embedding the original RAW file into the DNG conversion - though you get an enormous file).

Much of this information is about how a particular camera behaves under certain conditions, etc. Is the information significant, in many cases it can very well be - for the professional photographer. For the vast majority of those people out there, no, it will not be. In the end run, DNG may be safe and easy - camera specific RAW formats wiill be a bit riskier but always the best file for the image.
--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net
http://www.focusstudios.com

Peter Sills wrote:
[snip]

Member said:

As for DNG, I LOVE Adobe! I just think that they got this one
wrong. Instead of creating a format and trying to establish it as
a standard without really working with the camera manufacturers,
they should have developed a format WITH the manufacturers.

Click to expand...

Adobe discussed the idea of DNG with the camera manufacturers at the start of 2004, long before DNG was launched at the end of September 2004. Only Leica and Hasselblad supported DNG at that time.

The camera manufacturers have always been part of the problem, most of them showing no signs of wanting to be part of the solution. ANY camera manufacturer could support DNG out of their camera if they chose to, without screwing themselves up. For example, they could support it as an extra option. And 3 cameras and 4 digital backs already use DNG as their native raw formats, so it is obviously possible to use it.

Member said:

There
is a great deal of proprietary information in the RAW files of many
of the cameras out there. This will not come through the DNG
conversion (though you have the option of embedding the original
RAW file into the DNG conversion - though you get an enormous file).

Click to expand...

Where Adobe knows the nature of that proprietary information, it puts it into a field called DNGPrivateData, where any software that understands that data can pick it up. But camera manufacturers have typically refused to disclose to Adobe the nature of that data, even though they have been asked. So if any data that isn't stored there, the fault lies with the camera manufacturer.

Member said:

Much of this information is about how a particular camera behaves
under certain conditions, etc. Is the information significant, in
many cases it can very well be - for the professional photographer.
For the vast majority of those people out there, no, it will not
be. In the end run, DNG may be safe and easy - camera specific RAW
formats wiill be a bit riskier but always the best file for the
image.

Click to expand...

Any photographer who uses ACR should not see any differences if DNG is used. DNG holds, in its "public" parts, all of the data that ACR needs. So the following routes give the same results:
Native raw > ACR > Photoshop.
Native raw > DNG Converter > DNG > ACR > Photoshop.

Photographers can do a similar test with their raw converters and photo-editors of choice. Typically it will be those who use the raw converters supplied by the camera manufacturers who see a difference. Or who use raw converters that know a lot of unpublished stuff about the proprietary information in those raw files.

--
DNG is better than sliced bread;
DNG images don't become toast.

Maybe Adobe will wait with the new version of Photoshop because it will run on Vista? Vista would solve some issues with memory and might be faster than the 32bit XP versions.

I am afraid with the arrival of Vista there will be a whole lot of new programs that will run under Vista only, pressuring us all to upgrade again.....

Regards,
Hans

http://www.wildpicture.com

Sorry to argue, but -

Adobe disclosed what they were doing with DNG to the camera manufacturers, they did not include them in partners to help design a new file format. It was more like, "Here is what we are doing."

As to your commentary about using ACR you will see no difference, this is because ACR doesn't use any of that data that DNG does not support. Programs like C1 (which do use it through license with both Canon and Nikon for example) produce superior results - especially in the area of accurate white-balance - to ACR.
--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net
http://www.focusstudios.com

Peter Sills wrote:
[snip]

Member said:

Second, DNG - look into it. You "may" be loosing a fair amount of
camera specific information along with your conversion to DNG.
There is a reason that the camera manufacturers are not behind it.
The reason is that it does not do everything they think it should.
Conversion to DNG can loose image quality - if this is a concern to
you.

Click to expand...

[snip]

The reason that some camera manufacturers are not behind it isn't that. It is quite capable of doing what they need. Some cameras and some digital backs use it as their native raw format.

I believe that the main reason that camera manufacturers are not behind it is NIH, or else an intention to lock users into their own raw formats. Nothing that benefits photographers.

--
DNG is better than sliced bread;
DNG images don't become toast.

Peter Sills said:

Sorry to argue, but -

Adobe disclosed what they were doing with DNG to the camera
manufacturers, they did not include them in partners to help design
a new file format. It was more like, "Here is what we are doing."

Click to expand...

Probably true (although I don't know for sure). So what? The camera manufacturers have been part of the problem all along. They have no credibility as cooperative partners!

Remember that NO camera manufacturer had Adobe's experience in designing raw handling for multiple sensor configurations. DNG handles the raw files from perhaps 100+ cameras, and perhaps 14 or so camera manufacturers. What other raw formats cater for the raw files from multiple manufacturers? (PEF: Pentax & Samsung. And ...).

The camera manufacturers have had the opportunity to do something useful for years, with or without Adobe. But, even after Adobe launched DNG, Nikon played games with the D2X "as shot" WB. They are not only not cooperative, they have proved to be actively opposed to this level of cooperation. They clearly need to be led.

Member said:

As to your commentary about using ACR you will see no difference,
this is because ACR doesn't use any of that data that DNG does not
support. Programs like C1 (which do use it through license with
both Canon and Nikon for example) produce superior results -
especially in the area of accurate white-balance - to ACR.

Click to expand...

Then they can get it from DNGPrivateData, which is where the DNG Converter puts it.

--
DNG is better than sliced bread;
DNG images don't become toast.

I'm a member of NAPP and there isn't any mention of it yet. So about all you have is WAG's (wild a** guesses).

Adobe's normal product cycle is 18 months. It does make sense to me that they'd wait until Windows Vista is out to release a new version.
--
'Work is for people who don't know how to surf'

Barry,

I see you are a great fan of DNG, and my hat's off to you. However, I am not interested in a "fits all" solution. I am interested in the best possible image I can get out of my camera. If the camera manufacturers want to protect the proprietary way they do things, then let them - so long as it results in superior images - which it currently does.

Your needs are different than mine.
--
Peter Sills
Digital Focus
http://www.digitalfocus.net
http://www.focusstudios.com

Peter Sills said:

Barry,

I see you are a great fan of DNG, and my hat's off to you.
However, I am not interested in a "fits all" solution. I am
interested in the best possible image I can get out of my camera.
If the camera manufacturers want to protect the proprietary way
they do things, then let them - so long as it results in superior
images - which it currently does.

Click to expand...

[snip]

I'm making the point that the camera manufacturers' software could get identical results to what they get now if they output DNG from the camera. If they did so, the same information would be present, (and in fact more), and they could use it in the same way.

--
DNG is better than sliced bread;
DNG images don't become toast.

Barry Pearson said:

Then they can get it from DNGPrivateData, which is where the DNG
Converter puts it.

Click to expand...

And thats the part you keep glossing over barry, ALL data from ALL files supported by Dng ISNT put there. Most data from Most cameras is (And to be fair, for a good number, that is all ). The difference between all and most can be quite large if you suddenly need or want that data in the future.

Eric