Phones linear DNG support?

DxO PhotoLab Feature requests
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I understand RAW vs linear DNG and I understand that DXO’s noise reduction and other algorithms don’t make sense for DNG.

However, even if a linear DNG is a demosaiced, denoised, lens corrected, eventually composite and always already processed image, it remains agnostic when it comes to color and tones. So in a context of joint use of a proper camera and a phone, so as to easily achieve decent color and tone consistency, it would be very helpful to be able to open linear DNGs in Photolab.

RAW NR, lens corrections and others would obvioulsy be greyed out, but what stands for JPEGs should also be available for DNGs.

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Please don’t forget to vote for this request yourself.
And don’t hold your breath…….

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DxO has no issues to work with their “own” linear DNGs ( export to DNG from PhotoLab and open it again in PhotoLab ) or even with linear DNGs generated by, for example, Adobe tools

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There is a way to make this work. With ExifTool it’s possible to change the creator software and metadata of an image to trick PhotoLab into thinking the image is on the allowed list – ExifTool could be scripted. I was able to do this to test iPhone 11 RAW images (which turned out great) by changing the metadata to iPhone X. With my current iPhone 13 Pro, there’s no point as the images are no longer supported.

Since you have linear DNG the format should be standard. The trick here would be to use MetaImage to change the metadata to an acceptable camera, i.e. PhotoLab Linear DNG.

I’d love to know how it goes, as would @Stenis so please report the results.

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OF COURSE …

The refusal to work with some so-called “cooked” RAW files is impractical, as DxO demonstrates it has no issues processing them. Hopefully, if DxO continues to develop, market forces will drive them /ALSO/ to implement decent noise reduction on demosaicked images and /ALSO/ allow users to use manufacturer-supplied optics correction data when desired. This isn’t about determining which method is superior (DxO isn’t being asked to stop investing in their own optics corrections), but rather about providing users with reasonable choices, flexibility, and options.

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I have done quite a few scans of old pictures taken by and of my relatives that emigrated to the US in the begining of the nineteenhoundreds with my old Epson-scanner which litterally got a new life with the terrific scanner software Vuescan. I know just one thing that software isn’t capable of and that is to export DNG-files that Photolab can open.

I have had a discussion with that really talented developer but he claimed he is playing by the book. I remeber writing I thougt it was confusing of him using the RAW-concept in that application when it obviously was a DNG RGB-file Vuescan exported that Photolab do not open.

Well finally I gave up. I exported in TIFF despite I hate that old file format. I have written before of the problems using DNG as an intermediate RAW-format between Capture One and Photolab and I don’t understand why Capture One can’t use Adobes DNG-converter in the same embedded way as I have seen PhoMechanic and the Enterprise DAM of Fotoware do. Instead they seem to have developed a solution that just doesn’t work. In that case I doubt it is Photolabs fault.

Thanks for your input Alec and Auser :slight_smile:

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And what is the point to use C1 before PL ? did they (C1) start baking in any corrections in DNG files ?

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That is a good and logical question.
You see, I always normally makes the first development in Photolab producing JPEG-files in 4K with Display P3 ICC-profiles as a standard. That is fine normally so but not always especially in two cases.

  1. Photolab is very good for this kind of standard basic jobs BUT if I have to make some more complicated or sophisticated masking, Capture One is just sooo much better and effective than Photolab. I don´t even bother trying to do things like that anymore in Photolab and in that respect nothing new has really happened in Photolab 8 that can make me change that opinion.

  2. I still also have a lot of old color slides from more than 60 years of photographing (started 1963) that I digitizes by repro photography - that gives me RAW-originals. The problem though is that neither Deep Prime (not even XD2s), old Unsharp Mark sharpening or the new Lens Correction sharpening works at all on the grain texture of these pictures.

Now I usually start with Capture One of two reasons. Capture One is the state of the art when it comes to tethering to computers and this software also have sharpening tools that works fully out even with these files grain textures, as does the denoise.

On top of that I now always use Topaz Photo AI together with Capture One and that also solves the DNG-problem with Photolab because the DNG that Topaz exports is now no problem to import to Photolab. I prefer to use DNG before old heavy TIFF-files. Capture One and Topaz is very well integrated and works very well together through the “Edit with”-function in C1.

When I do this in C1 I always use the Sessions-mode and not the monolithic database because that is compatible with the way Photolab stores and reads the files. I just nornmally store the DNG-files there in the same structure because there is really no point of doing anything more with these DNG-files in Photolab sins they have got all they needed in C1.

All the metadata maintenance I do I do in Photo Mechanic since the maintenance tools in both C1 and PL sucks. No problem för either C1 and PL to read that XMP-metadata.

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I am sorry, but the question - what is the point to use C1 to export DNG from it ? as far as I remember C1 does not even do demosaick on DNG export - so you are essentially using a worse equivalent of Adobe DNG converter … so what is the point ? vice versa is logical - you can use PL demosaick/NR/optics correction and then can do a color transform and post process in C1

so PL → DNG → C1 is OK, but C1 → DNG → PL is senseless

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I know Capture One recently have improved the handling of DNG but still Photolab cant import either DNG from Capture One or from Vuescan that I use.

I asked Bing Copilote and got this answer:

“Yes, Capture One has indeed made improvements in exporting DNG files over the past few years. The software now supports exporting DNG files in their original format, which includes adjustments, metadata, and relevant profiles. Additionally, Capture One has enhanced its compatibility with various camera models that use DNG as their native format.”

I will test a roundtrip between Photab and C1 again when I have some time. Earlier Photolab could read DNG that was first exported from PL and then imported into C1 and updated there and reexported to Photolab.

I think we have to test also what happens with the content despite what I have read about the improvements lately.

Capture One has just released a new service release with some bug fixes but I haven´t had time to read the release notes yet.

I have written it before:
I think it would be the best if all software using DNG also used the Adobe DNG Converter as a plug-in to handle these files.

If you shall use DNG-seriously either Photolab or Capture One is an alternative really. If I should do it seriously like we did in the cIty Museum of Stockhom and in the cultural heritage sector world wide, there would be no option but using Lightroom. No other converter can challenge Lightroom when it comes to DNG-suppurt and DNG-specific features.

… but if you are living in a DNG world limited to either Capture One or Photolab it is fine as long as you don´t intend to migrate to something else. I guess it is possible to migrate to Lightroom from Photolab since DXO has adapted to a workflow with Lightroom but I guess, that is about it. Capture One exports edit metadata to DNG now but since all applications handles this is a proprietary way dataexchange normally will not work. either way.

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