Nikon have announced Capture NX, which implies an extended role for NEF.
Microsoft have announced Windows Media Photo, for lossy & lossless images.

I've tried to make sense of the various announcements, to see how these formats compare with familiar formats such as DNG, TIFF, JPEG, etc. Don't rely on my interpretation!

NEF - "Nikon Electronic Format"




It is the news about NX that is suggesting an extended role of NEF. NX appears to be one of the new-style products like Aperture and Lightroom, offering a new user interface paradigm and lots of non-destructive editing. I'll talk about NEF rather than NX. See:
<http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/24317.html?src=rssall>

Apparently, you can open any JPEG or TIFF in NX and save them as Nikon raw images in the NEF format. NEF files can include raw data or regular TIFF-like data. In addition, Nikon can put its edit list (a small XML file) directly into the NEF format.

People will ask: why are Nikon putting so many different roles into one file format with one extension? (NEF is already used for images from Nikon scanners). I think a more interesting question is: why didn't Adobe do the same?

In September 2004, I'm sure Adobe could have launched "Super-TIFF", as an extended version of the familiar TIFF (6.0), to act as a common raw format as well. Super-TIFF would have had both the familiar TIFF format, and the current capability of DNG, as proper subsets. I find it hard to imagine that Adobe didn't consider this.

This would have confused the industry. Part of the TIFF brand is "familiarity" and "stability", with so many products supporting it. Super-TIFF might be seen as destabilising that part of the industry. Super-TIFF doesn't SOUND like the sort of thing you want in your camera, because it has too much "baggage", albeit optional, such as CMYK, etc! Going for a new specialised format gave the opportunity to build a focused brand, with words like "Digital Negative" and the film-frame logo convincing people that they knew what DNG was about.

I suspect the reasons Adobe created a separate format were more marketing reasons than technical ones. And I suspect that, with totally different marketing objectives, and reduced historical constraints, Nikon found it convenient and logical to go for "Super-NEF".

Technically, I see little problem in theory with what Nikon are doing. NEF is based on TIFF anyway. In fact, I believe it is based in ISO's TIFF/EP, which was based on TIFF. Compare this with DNG, which is also based on TIFF and TIFF/EP, can hold JPEGs within it, and also holds an edit list based on XML, (XMP, in fact). There are probably more similarities than differences between the Nikon and Adobe formats. (I wonder if Adobe could create Super-TIFF overnight, using copy-and-paste, if they wanted to?)

WDP - "Windows Media Photo" (hm!)




In brief, WDP covers the roles of TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, etc, but not raw imaging. In other words, lossless or lossy RGB and CMYK digital images, and even more, but nothing to support colour filter arrays, hence no way of holding raw sensor data. See:
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/wmphoto/default.aspx>

Windows Media Photo is a new file format for continuous-tone still images that surpasses the limitations of existing image formats. Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:
- Multiple color formats for display or print
- Fixed or floating point, high-dynamic-range image encoding
- Lossless or high-quality lossy compression
- Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
- Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decoding
Windows Media Photo delivers a lightweight, high-performance algorithm with a small memory footprint that enables practical, in-device encoding and decoding.

I don't think Microsoft are intending WDP to be a "raw file format" competitor to DNG. (Certainly not with this vers

(Whoops! Cut short by the message length limit).

I don't think Microsoft are intending WDP to be a "raw file format" competitor to DNG. (Certainly not with this version). Instead, they are likely to assert that with a specification like that, who needs to shoot raw? Shoot WDP in-camera instead. This message may go down better with mobile-phone cameras than dSLRs.

Just my view.

Hi Barry,

One of the more interesting points about NEFs with Nikon Capture NX is its ability to store up to five versions in the header as XML. Pity NEF a closed shop. Is versioning something for DNG to consider using XMP?

-- Robert Edwards.

Robert - absolutely!

This has been discussed and requested at various times, I think both here and the Lightroom forums.

It appears to be something whose time has come - Aperture and NX permit storage of multiple edits, (although Aperture doesn't do it in the raw file). Photographers want this - well, I certainly do!

Hi Barry,

This has been discussed and requested at various times, I think both here
and the Lightroom forums.




Yes but now it will be available in Nikon Capture NX (well sort of).

ACR already writes a single set of settings as XMP into conversions. While this is Adobe-centric and perhaps more for archiving those settings, there's no reason this custom XMP data couldn't store multiple sets of adjustments into DNG.

It would be better for an open source, standard method of versioning that all apps can read/write to. XMP would be the obvious solution, and DNG seems the natural repository.

Once I thought the IPTC may be able to add a versioning field, and there is some interest by David Riecks (www.controlledvocabulary.com). The IPTC are meeting to review IPTC4XMP and if anyone has practical suggestions for implementing versioning now is the time to speak up. Unlike DNG the IPTC have no problems with politics or competitors :).

IPTC or custom XMP for versioning?

-- Robert Edwards.

Interesting related factoid: Lightroom betas can convert JPEGs, TIFFs, and PSDs into DNGs, which can then be opened in Adobe Camera Raw.

There are still some glitches in the process (sometimes processings settings are double-applied), but these glitches will all be ironed out by the time Lightroom 1.0 ships.

Lightroom betas can convert JPEGs, TIFFs, and PSDs into DNGs, which can
then be opened in Adobe Camera Raw.




hmmm ... sure opens up new possibilities for a fully featured processing engine that takes advantage of it. :-)

Thanks, Thomas.

Are they saved as the (optional) DNG "linearised" form? For example, would they also be accessible to any other raw converter that was able to access linearised DNG?

(I use Windows, so can't try Lightroom. When I read that the raw conversion sliders worked on other file formats too, I wondered whether the internal representation for both raw and the others was similar in some way).

Will this (conversion of non-raw files to DNG) require a new version of the DNG specification? DNG are not RAW files anymore, then?
Indeed, is it a linear file, in 16bits?