Do most people delete their original proprietary files after using Adobe DNG to convert to DNG format? I want to have a format that is read by Photoshop and can be fairly reliable to be supported in 10 years. I am just uneasy deleting the original files but I do not want to waste the space of having two copies of the same file in "raw" format. Any advice?
jay

Up until now I haven't done so - there are some values in the
MakerNote tag that weren't preserved during the conversion to DNG.

Supposedly the DNG 3.1 (now supported by the DNG & ACR downloads
available on the Adobe site) saves the MakerNote tag data (without
the space penalty of the earlier option - embedding the entire RAW
file in the DNG).

As I am somewhat paranoid, I'll probably still burn the original
RAW files to CD/DVD, but I now feel a little more confident about
then converting the RAW files to the DNGs (which are significantly
smaller for me - I use a Pentax *ist-D)

I'm burning all my RAW files to CD or DVD before doing anything with them.

<Jay_D_Parkinson@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:3bba43ba.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI...
> Do most people delete their original proprietary files after using Adobe
> DNG to convert to DNG format? I want to have a format that is read by
> Photoshop and can be fairly reliable to be supported in 10 years. I am
> just uneasy deleting the original files but I do not want to waste the
> space of having two copies of the same file in "raw" format. Any advice?
> jay

Since I recently began converting to DNG and also embed the RAW within it, I
was wondering this same thing. The direction I have chosen is to keep the
RAW file, but I have been archiving them to DVD before deleting. I just
feel a little safer that way, and well, I have a hard time deleting just
about anything!

If asked for my advice, I would say "the only specific recommendation I will give is what Ramón says - take a copy of the original Raw files".

But if asked what I do, I would say "once I have at least 2 DNGs of each file in different places, I delete the original Raws, without embedding them first". And I sleep easy at night.

How can I sleep easy after defying the advice of Adobe and many commentators? Because, with CS2, Adobe crossed an important line:

Before CS2, DNG was an important initiative for Adobe, but parallel to their main products, not really part of them. With CS2, with the option of saving Raw images as DNG with the settings embedded in the DNG instead of sidecars, DNG became a fundamental working part of Photoshop.

The world's 2nd biggest software company, one with a reputation for transforming the way we work using key standards that have a life of many years, even decades, (PostScript, PDF, TIFF), just passed the point of no return with DNG. I'm gambling, (yes, that is what it is), that this is one of the key events in DNG's path to critical mass.

So, I'll say "don't try this at home", while doing exactly that myself!