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DNG files in Aperture - anyone having success??

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Ray Sachs

Ray Sachs

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I've been thinking about getting a camera that isn't supported by Apple's RAW support. In theory, I can convert the files to DNG files and then import those. But I downloaded a copy of Adobe's DNG converter and converted a small batch of RAW files from one of my current, supported, cameras, and Aperture wouldn't import/open the resulting DNG files. Apple's website claims:

"Aperture works with most DNG files generated from cameras that support this format and with DNG files generated by the Adobe DNG Converter with the “Convert to Linear Image” option turned off."

I can't find an option for "convert to linear image" anywhere in the DNG converter to turn it off, but the basic files will not open in Aperture 3. They'll import, but they never show up as an image, just the big triangle with an exclamation point in it indicating an incompatible file type.

Am I doing something wrong here? Anyone else having any luck with this?

Thanks for any help...

-Ray
 
Ray Sachs said:
Am I doing something wrong here? Anyone else having any luck with this?
Click to expand...
Aperture did open DNG files from unsupported Pentax cameras for me. Those DNG files were straight out of camera though...

--
Edvinas
 
Well, that clearly helped in terms of showing me where to check or uncheck the linear image option, but I'm still importing files that Aperture won't read. I tried every combination of linear, compressed, jpeg size, and embedded RAW files I could find and NONE of them produced DNG files that Aperture would actually open after they were imported.

I'm stumped. These are from Olympus ORF files, if that matters - the RAW files work just fine but I can't get the DNGs created from those RAW files to open in A3.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out how to get to that dialog. I think it SHOULD have helped. ;)

Perhaps a call to Apple is in order...

-Ray
 
Thanks for that. I tried it with a few DNG files converted from Canon RAW files from an S90 and no problem - the DNG files opened right up. So maybe it is the lenses? That thread you pointed to mostly seemed to deal with Aperture support for m43 camera RAW files - that's been dealt with now since all of the Olympus m43 cameras are supported and all but the newest Panasonics are as well. The RAW files work just fine, but the DNG didn't, yet did with the Canon. Very odd, since the S90 needs all kinds of lens correction information to translate through the DNG as well.

I guess I just have to find out whether the cameras I'm considering have been tried out.

Thanks for all of your help in at least identifying the problem,

-Ray
 
I use this methodology to convert Canon 60D raw to DNG
and process on Aperture 2.

Have had no problems, the Adobe Utility was updated on 8/30/10
to support Canon 60D raw format.

Perhaps you can check to see if the Adobe utility supports your camera model.

Looks to me like the utility is camera specific.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

John
 
mlewan said:
It may depend on the lens. There was a discussion about this at http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2284884&start=30&tstart=0
Click to expand...
Yes, I forgot about that. Cameras which use lenses that have purposefully undercorrected distortion correct this distortion when generation the in-camera jpeg or just the preview on the back of the camera and they write the correction parameters into the raw file so that raw converters which understand it can correct the distortion also automatically. Several compact cameras fall into this category and m43 cameras in general as well (but maybe some 43 cameras and lenses fall into this category as well).

If the raw converter explicitly supports the camera (like Aperture with the Canon S90), it will do the correction. It is quite likely that if Aperture is not trained to understand a certain embedded correction, it simply refuses to open the raw file (since it could not display it properly).

Aperture 3 officially supports all 43 and m43 cameras but maybe there are some 43 lenses that ask for corrections though most lenses might not and Apple counts that as 'supporting' the camera although it might not do so for all lenses.

Or this is just an old-fashioned bug (maybe triggered by some lenses only).

I am curious, does Aperture show anything in quick preview mode (it normally should display the embedded jpeg, but maybe it is stubborn here).

And finally, what camera (and lenses) did you actually use?
 
Yeah, a tough one to figure. I've so far tried RAW files from the S90, the LX5, the EX1, and the EP2 with the 20mm pancake lens. All of the fixed lens compacts and the EP2 require software correction for the lenses. The S90 and the EP2 are directly supported in Aperture 3. The LX5 and the EX1 are not yet supported by Aperture 3.

And both the S90 and EX1 RAW files, when converted to DNGs, open right up. No problems and with the lens corrections done. So, one supported camera and one unsupported. The EP2 and LX5 DNG files would NOT open up and no preview either. Again, one supported camera and one unsupported. Someone else told me that DNGs from the LX3 have never opened up in Aperture either, and that's been supported for longer than any of them. So there must be something the manufacturers are sticking in their RAW files that either works with the DNG conversion or confuses it somewhere along the lone. I've pretty much accepted that I'm just gonna have to wait if I want to get an LX5 to process the RAW files, at least in Aperture. Maybe just shoot RAW+jpeg for a while until they add RAW support for that camera - live with the jpegs for now and then go back and play with the best of the RAW files later.

Thanks for all of the input and thoughts,

-Ray
 
Having all the same DNG issues with A3. Trying to get Raw files from the Olympus XZ-1 to import to aperture. Updated the Adobe Raw Converter with the latest update that supports the new XZ-1 raw files, did the conversion but A3 won't recognize the file format. Very frustrating.
 
It works for me. When I imported my RAW files into LR I had them converted at that point. Down the road I imported them into AP and had no issues.
 
dmorris06 said:
Having all the same DNG issues with A3. Trying to get Raw files from the Olympus XZ-1 to import to aperture. Updated the Adobe Raw Converter with the latest update that supports the new XZ-1 raw files, did the conversion but A3 won't recognize the file format.
Click to expand...
Very likely the XZ-1 requires (automatic) distortion correction of the raw data to display an image 'properly' (a lot of recent compacts need it). For some reason it seems that either the parameters and the kind of distortion correction as stored in metadata in the raw file is not sufficiently standardised that Aperture would be able to carry out this correction without having first learned how to distortion-correct specifically XZ-1 images or Apple was lazy or cautious and does not trust any distortion-correction parameters it has not studied in detail itself (despite those parameters being in principle standardised).
Or the problem is in how the distortion parameters are stored in the DNG file.

In short, I do not know whether the distortion correction parameters are sufficiently standardised (well, as long as they appear in proprietary raw file formats they certainly are not perfectly standardised but Adobe might convert them into DNG file metadata that adhere to a standard) or if Apple is a combination of lazy and cautious and not accepting the standardised distortion correction parameters sight un-seen but I very much guess it is the distortion correction which triggers this 'unsupported' message.
 
Is there any solution to this yet? Apple still doesn't support the E-M10's raw files directly and when we try a workaround like the DNG converter it still doesn't work! This is hopeless. How long has the E-M10 been available? How different can it be to the E-M5?

Getting a bit fed up. I would really like to use my camera without paying blood money to Adobe.
 
Andrew Butterfield said:
Is there any solution to this yet? Apple still doesn't support the E-M10's raw files directly and when we try a workaround like the DNG converter it still doesn't work! This is hopeless. How long has the E-M10 been available? How different can it be to the E-M5?

Getting a bit fed up. I would really like to use my camera without paying blood money to Adobe.
Click to expand...
 
Andrew Butterfield said:
Is there any solution to this yet? Apple still doesn't support the E-M10's raw files directly and when we try a workaround like the DNG converter it still doesn't work! This is hopeless. How long has the E-M10 been available? How different can it be to the E-M5?

Getting a bit fed up. I would really like to use my camera without paying blood money to Adobe.
Click to expand...
I'm with you on the last part... Mostly because Adobe's TS or lack of support for your money. That said, I decided to try Capture One and I really like it. You might want to try their trial version and see if you think it might work for you. Not the solution to fixing the problem with Aperture, but better in my mind than paying Adobe.
 
Wayne Brissette said:
That said, I decided to try Capture One and I really like it. You might want to try their trial version and see if you think it might work for you. Not the solution to fixing the problem with Aperture, but better in my mind than paying Adobe.
Click to expand...
I did try it but didn't like it much. It seemed a bit slow and clunky compared to Aperture and Lightroom on my pretty recent and well-specced iMac, and I just didn't feel happy using it. I do like using Lightroom (my trial version has expired unfortunately) but having already bought Aperture and learned how to use it, I want to keep on doing that, which doesn't seem too much to ask. If Apple isn't going to bother with raw updates in future they should let us know and we can move on. They should have at least kept its DNG engine up to date while they do this transition.
 
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