DNG and PSD Codecs for Windows Vista?

[ralphpaonessa]

What are my options for viewing DNG and PSD thumbnails in Windows Vista outside Bridge?

My understanding is that you need a CODEC. Perhaps this is not so simple (apparently there was a real debacle with the first NEF CODEC).

I found a DNG CODEC for $30 from Ardfry Imaging http://www.ardfry.com/dng-codec/. Has anyone tried this?

One would think Adobe would have handled this; I wonder if this is a competitive issue between Adobe and Microsoft? Adobe no doubt wants us to use Bridge, and I would be happy to do it, if it didn't SUCK. (Actually, I use Bridge all the time in a love/hate relationship; but for some operations in Vista I'd love to see those thumbnails.)

So much for "Universal format." 

Ralph Paonessa

[johnbeardy]

Thomas Knoll has said there's going to be a Codec for DNG -  see here. How high a priority is it? Who knows?

John

[ralphpaonessa]

John -- Thanks for pointing that out.

Has anyone tried the Ardfry codec? They actually have a free trial. My only hesitation was the knowledge that something went bad with the original Nikon NEF codec, that could possibly corrupt raw files. (I believe this happened when users with the bad codec tried to write metadata from Vista?)

I only want the DNG codec to view the thumbnails. I just want to be reasonably sure it can't somehow corrupt my beautiful DNGs (and the ugly ones as well  ).

Ralph

[johnbeardy]

Ralph

I've heard good things about that codec but haven't hands-on experience.

Just spotted this post from Tom Hogarty, Lightroom's product manager. Look at the first comment.

I agree with Microsoft's placing the responsibility where it belongs and requiring camera vendors to make their file formats in Windows - right now Apple might save themselves a lot of bad Aperture PR if they had taken the same line. The DNG codec seems a slightly different matter. Ideally I would like Adobe to supply a codec, but the DNG format is in the public domain so Microsoft should be able to write a codec themselves. PSD is not, which is one reason why I recommend TIF.

John

[David C. Blake]

John -- Thanks for pointing that out.

Has anyone tried the Ardfry codec? They actually have a free trial. My only hesitation was the knowledge that something went bad with the original Nikon NEF codec, that could possibly corrupt raw files. (I believe this happened when users with the bad codec tried to write metadata from Vista?)

I only want the DNG codec to view the thumbnails. I just want to be reasonably sure it can't somehow corrupt my beautiful DNGs (and the ugly ones as well  ).

Ralph

Thank you for the interest in our product.

Currently our DNG codec only displays metadata, so it would be difficult to corrupt the file since we never write to it.

One ability of the codec that people are fond of is that it produces thumbnails and previews based on the rotation information in the DNG file.

Many professional photographers are customers.  In fact, several have written to use asking that we write 64 bit codecs for Canon and Nikon RAW formats.  We are pretty busy right now with the DNG codec, but we will be evaluating doing 64 bit codecs later this year.

We do plan to add editing capabilites for XMP metadata in the future.  Unlike Nikon, we will do full interoperability testing before we release this feature.

I do fully expect Adobe to eventually ship a codec, as well as a few others.  There are a handful of companies that work in the RAW processing space, and they all have the expertise to write a codec.  There are many ways to differentiate and add value to a RAW workflow, so I am sure there is room for all of us, even a free one.

David

[peterkrogh]

David,
Thanks for stopping by.
How do you produce the thumbs and previews?  Are you working off the embedded preview n the DNG, or are you pulling it from the raw data? If from the raw data, how is it being interpreted? (What is the rendering engine?)
Peter

[David C. Blake]

By default, we use the embedded preview and thumbnail.  1024 is a typical dimension for a preview, but many asked for a preview that was larger given that today's high DPI displays are much larger, so you can optionally have the codec generate previews at the full resolution of your display.  This takes longer, but it appears that most people would rather see a higher quality image.  If a full-size preview is already in the image and it's somewhat close to the size of the display, then the larger embedded preview is used.

As for the rendering engine, we currently use the one that is provided in the DNG SDK with our own speed improvements.  The DNG SDK's rendering engine is very portable across processor architectures, but also very slow.

We are improving the codec incrementally.  At some point we will add more demosaicing algorithms and will leverage Vista's HDR floating point rendering pipeline.

Before we work on that, though, I think better support for searching and editing metadata would be a better service to people.  The role of the codec is to help people manage and prioritize their workflow, and a different tool such as Photoshop or a RAW editing tool is used after the codec does its part.  We may eventually move into that space by providing more rendering options, but there is a greater demand right now for getting basic support into Vista 64, which appears to be the favored version of Vista for the pros I have been in contact with.

David

[havezet]

By default, we use the embedded preview and thumbnail.  1024 is a typical dimension for a preview, but many asked for a preview that was larger given that today's high DPI displays are much larger, so you can optionally have the codec generate previews at the full resolution of your display.  This takes longer, but it appears that most people would rather see a higher quality image.  If a full-size preview is already in the image and it's somewhat close to the size of the display, then the larger embedded preview is used.

David,

The DNG converter tools (like ACR or the free DNGConverter) allows users to store a full size preview. This preview also has the user customization/edits applied to it which makes it a great resource that also reflects the edits. I think Peter is asking if you are using *that* preview. That preview does not have a typical dimension of 1024 but is full sized and can be extracted as a JPG from the file's metadata which makes it very fast to use, especially when compared to RAW rendering.

Hert

[David C. Blake]

I think Peter is asking if you are using [the full size preview from the Adobe DNG Converter].

I'm sorry I was a little bit brief in my description.

The codec is configurable.  By default, it will use the built-in previews that are in the DNG file.  Not everyone uses the converter.  People often forget that there are other tools such as those that ship with the H3D, or in the case of the Leica M8 that shoots DNG natively, which create files where there may not be anything more than a thumbnail image and the full RAW image which is several times larger than the screen resolution.  To accommodate these users, the codec can be configured to generate a preview at the resolution of the screen.

In some cases you may want to turn on preview generation even if there is a built-in preview.  Consider the H3D again.  The full size preview created by the converter is much larger than the screen, and it will have artifacts when resized back down to screen dimensions.  The resizing done in the DNG codec appears to be better than what Vista has available, so in some cases it looks better with the generated preview than with using the full size image created by the converter.

People use the codec for different work flow scenarios.  The ability to generate previews on demand was added based on feedback during the beta cycle.  Some people want the absolute best quality when previewing their files, and they are willing to wait a bit longer for that.  The wait isn't all that much longer than using the built-in preview.  Our rendering engine is multi-threaded, so it will use any extra processors or cores you have in your PC, and there is some very efficient hand-coded SSE2 assembly that we added to enhance the interpolation in the demosaic process.  There is more that we can do to improve the performance, and my goal is to get to a subsecond rendering time.

David