It's Official! Capture One v4 supports DNG

[Rick McCleary]

I just received the Phase One newsletter - RAW NEWS #67 - in which they officially announce Capture One 4.  Along with a bunch of other goodies, they state that the program will support DNG.  Release of the LE version will be the beginning of 2007.  The PRO version will be the end of Q2 2007.  I guess that means May-June.  With Leopard and CS3 coming out about then, it should be a very exciting time.

http://www.phaseone.com/upload/press_phaseone_captureone4_260906.pdf

[peterkrogh]

Nice to see that in print...
Peter

[Michael_S]

Hi Everyone,

So how many choices do we have for DNG today, that will continue in some fashion? (meaning ignore the soon-to-be-deceased RawShooter family)

• Adobe Camera Raw 3.x
• Lightroom Beta 4
• SilkyPix (hope I have this right)

And sometime in 2007 we will have:

• Adobe Camera Raw 4.x (I hope rumors of its demise are unfounded. That makes no sense.)
• Lightroom v1.0
• SilkyPix
• Capture One LE 4 (then Pro v4 later in 2007)

That makes only two major and one minor player in the DNG world.  Although, it is true that Adobe is the 800 pound gorilla of the photo world.  And, Capture One has a strong and loyal following.  Anyone have any ideas on image quality?  How does C1 3.7.5 compare to LR b4 for quality?  I burned up my C1 trial time before LR b4 came out so I don't have many comparison shots to use.

Will the trend to more metadata editing (instead of pixel pushing) continue in many products in 2007?  Seems like the direction we are headed, but I'd love to hear more informed opinions than my own.

Thanks,
Michael S.

[Rick McCleary]

I believe Raw Developer also supports DNG.

[Michael_S]

Thanks Rick,
Excellent point, but I'm purely a PC user.  So my limited platform selection colored my post.

--Michael S.

[Marc Rochkind]

And another point about DNG on the Mac: Unlike with Windows XP (don't know about Vista), raw support is built into the OS's imaging feature set, so it's extremely easy to develop an imaging application that manipulates raw images. Apple's own Aperture is one obvious example,  but I've also written a viewer for my personal use that displays raws, including DNGs, using built-in OS capabilities only. (That is, no 3rd party imaging toolkit.)

--Marc

[peterkrogh]

Marc,
I would expect Vista to support DNG at a System/CODEC level.

Although Apple's support is imperfect, it is there at a system level.  I would expect it to only get better.
Peter