Annual tradition of requesting basic stuff. For 2025: DNG support

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
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Yes, I know this is a known issue. Since 2018 at least.
Yes I know there are. Many. Other. Threads requesting this basic feature, and I have voted for them.

Regardless, I’m making yet another thread requesting the apparently deaf [but in reality, simply neglectful] dev team: toggle that switch to enable DNG support in DxO PhotoLab. Edit: And to be clear, the original 2018 post was marked as Closed, but this still is unresolved after 7 years. Hopefully this one will bump DNG support in the backlog.

Why would I say “flick the switch”? Because it’s as simple as that, DxO does support DNGs, all of them. They’re just gatekeeping mobile and a few other DNGs.

So this will serve as a feature request, and a tutorial to demonstrate why it’s supported, it’s just that DxO doesn’t give a hoot about their paying customers.

First, you take a DNG file that DxO PL8 “can’t” read, such as this raw photo from my trusty and old Galaxy S10e from 6? 7? years ago:

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See? DxO doesn’t like that. Now we just take that very same file, and change its EXIF data fields of Make and Model using a free tool such as EXIF Pilot [and donate to these guys if possible!], to something that DxO deems worthy of opening. Say, an Apple iPhone 8 Plus like this:

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Just click on the "Edit EXIF " button, and then Make: “Apple”, Model: “iPhone 8 Plus”.
It works with any other camera that DxO actually supports their DNGs, such as older Apple phones, Pentax and Leica. I decided to stick with the iPhone 8 Plus to stick to the OG post that thought of spoofing the files.

And then… OH MY GOD!! It’S A MIRACLE!! The code of DxO magically mutated and somehow it allowed some super duper strange DNG previously impossible to be recognised by PhotoLab, to be easily opened and developed as if it the only problem was a FREAKING SWITCH THAT ARBITRARILY JUST DOESN’T ALLOW YOU TO OPEN IT.

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Running the latest build of DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite
DNG from Samsung Galaxy S10e
Spoofed EXIF to Apple iPhone 8

DxO PL dev team, you can do better.

Sincerely,
Your paying customers.

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Where is it in your backlog DxO staff ?

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I bet that backlog goes back to befor PL!

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Your sarcasm is impressive but misguided. You’ve not waved a magic wand, you’ve simply made a file from your unsupported phone, to appear as if it was a file from one that is supported. While that does allow PL to open the file, it negates the main point of using PL, which is to apply camera specific corrections to the file. Meaning the unsupported file ends up with inappropriate corrections applied to it.

If you’re happy with a kludge like that, that’s fine, but DxO are clearly not happy with that sort of approach and thus choose not to adopt it.

In other words, people who want this sort of universal approach to image editing are not the sort of customers DxO are targeting. They are not:

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The native DNG files of recent flagship phones are highly processed DNG files that provide higher quality images compared to jpg. Dynamic range, color gamut, minimal sharpening or processing, and multiple exposure fusion clearly win over the limitations of native jpg files.

The Android Lightroom Camera application caln also produce dng raw files.

Non-DxO editors such as Adobe Lightroom do include camera profiles for smartphones.

DxO already supports TIF, jpg, and to some extent the dngs derived from DxO-supported cameras.

Flagship phones are sold by tens of million units, i.e. volumes much larger than any lens-body mirrorless camera combination. Why is DxO ignoring such market ?

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Only DxO can answer that. My theory is it’s because PL’s unique selling point, it’s camera & lens specific correction modules, are time consuming to create, it can be months before PL supports a new camera body and/or lens. There are just too many camera phones coming on to the market for DxO to keep up.

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and why are some users so angry at the idea of DNG having the same support as jpg? Every time this comes up its as if the end of the world is being asked for rather than the same support as jpg’s. We know DXO has lost customers who want to process all their images in the same program. I may be wrong but the world didn’t end when jpgs gained a wide range of processing indeed mostly used by phone users who have to make do with a lower quality input than DNG.

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How about starting this year with just Pixel 9, iPhone 16 and Samsung S24 … That would be a good start !

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I’m going to assume you’re not technically inclined, rather than trolling [especially since you don’t seem to know what “spoofing” means], so I’ll explain - I obviously know there’s no magic wand, the files are supported and one only needs to make DxO PL think that it’s one of those officially supported files, a.k.a., in the whitelist, and voilà, you can now develop those “unsupported” DNGs.

You’re pointing out another issue, the lens correction module, which is also a) outdated and b) users [myself included] have asked for years to have manual control over, so we can use those profiles to manual lenses, and also because they fail spectacularly at reading basic EXIF data. I, to this day, still have an issue in which DxO incorrectly, automatically, and unavoidably mistakes my 25mm lens for another. But I digress… it’s not the point, as others have already stated, and in case it’s not obvious to you, THOUSANDS of photographers are mobile-only, so it boggles the mind that DxO won’t allow to PL open DNGs. Who cares if lens corrections are not applied - their official stance is that it’s “not normal DNGs, they’re a different kind of DNGs and DxO PL can’t open those” [you can find those threads in this forum, I’m not linking], which is of course not true. Therefore, spoofing.

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At the very least! Or even better [I think] how about let us open all DNGs since the capability is already there, and just give us a warning message “Camera/lens not supported, lens corrections unavailable” like it does whenever you open a photo taken with a manual lens, or unsupported profile.

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The capability in DxO does not include Jpeg XL decoding. Conversion to an older DNG version of the standard would need to be done by a converter application such as Adobe DNG converter.

https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/CamCyclopedia/JPEG-XL-Image-Codec/ba-p/15356525

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Umm, clearly DxO care, hence your gripe with them.

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It may not be as complicated as all that. Curious about ProRaw with JPEG XL compression, I was able to find and download a sample file from the internet. In ExifTool the file looks like a typical linear DNG. To my surprise it opened right up in the Nitro (Gentlemen Coders) application. All sliders and features worked as they would with any other ProRaw file. It IS a ProRaw file, just one with JPEG XL compression. In addition, a small jpeg file is also contained within the DNG wrapper. The small jpeg acts a preview and will export to devices and apps that do not support ProRaw.

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A very good reason why DxO may not want to open themselves up to tens of millions of new customers is that they cannot satisfactorily support the customers they already have, if this forum is any indication. It may or may not be; the satisfied customers may be a quiet majority editing their images without bothering DxO support. And wouldn’t a “mobile-only” customer need a mobile app, anyway?

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That may well be true, I’ve been a DxO user for over 10 years and have hardly ever(never?) had to raise an issue about PL. (Not the case with nik collection however!) And I only visit the forum occasionally(4 or 5 times a year) just to see what topics are being covered. But PL works for all of my cameras and lenses. So I guess I’m one of that “quiet majority” and I know several other users who are in the same boat.

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I’d love to see some simple support for DNGs. Some things to consider

  • Lens correction is usually part of the DNG and embedded via transformation instructions. While it might not be as perfect as DXO measured correction, it is definitely usable. DXO could either apply it during processing or (even simpler!) keep the transformation instructions when writing the output

  • There are some weird phone sensors our there that might need special support: quad bayer in “full resolution mode” comes into my mind. This is when they use every pixel of a quad bayer pattern but then shift the pixels around to make it look like a regular bayer pattern (samsung calls this “remosaic” (https://www.sony-semicon.com/en/technology/mobile/quad-bayer-coding.html). This results in some weird color artifacts. I’d love DXO to tweak their algorithm for this pattern.

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They don’t, because a) they’ve never said that’s the reason not to support DNGs, and b) if they cared about users " applying the correct camera+lens combo to their RAW images", they would allow manual lens selection and also fix their existing automatic lens detection - there’s freeware that reads EXIF data better than DxO, which is how it “knows” which camera and lens combination to use, and DxO will recognise the wrong lens and automatically apply the wrong profile to it. And you can’t change it. So how is that them caring? Because they know, I’ve posted about it and I’m not the only one.

So no, DxO doesn’t care, and now you can say “hence your gripe with them”.

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I am positive the quiet majority isn’t completely satisfied - they’re just not vocal about it because there are workarounds, either by spoofing in this case, or using other software to mitigate the lack of features here. Features that should be there, mind you. Edit: features like panorama stitching, focus stacking, background/subject isolation/detection, customisable hotkeys, a proper image compare tool for culling… and of course, DNG support. I supplement DxO PL with freeware, when PhotoLab should be the complete workflow [per their marketing claims]. Affinity Photo, Lightroom, C1, Darktable, GIMP… the competition has all that.

And I agree that mobile-only customers would need a mobile app, that’s another thing they’ve been asking for. I still think there are some users who shoot RAW on their phones and edit on a PC/Mac, really not supporting DNGs makes absolutely no sense to me, they’re intentionally creating a problem by manually limiting the software, I really don’t get it.

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DNG Raw support for Android phones has been in DxO’s backlog since June 2018 !! Almost 7 years ago. It is unconceivable that such an easy support would be that low in their priority list.
DxO reply, June 2018

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Yup, precisely… 7 years, and on top of that they marked that thread as closed.
So they received feedback, they wrote it down, they told us they wrote it down, and then they burned the post-it note and ignored us.

DxO could devour market share with mobile, but I guess DxO’s #1 priority right now is… [checks notes…] launching storm capes :rofl: I mean…

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