Those Who Define Are the Masters
If you shoot digital photos, odds are you either use, or are familiar with, the RAW file format. A RAW file is simply one that contains the actual, unprocessed raw data created by a digital camera. That being the case, such files provide a better starting point for manipulation and ensure that none of the original image data has been lost, ensuring the utmost fidelity. Sounds great. In theory.
As fate would have it, there are almost as many flavors of RAW as there are camera manufacturers. Worse, many of these formats are undocumented, so it's difficult for file manipulation and editing applications to work with them. Worse still, with the format undocumented, the long-term future of such images is in doubt, since the manufacturers can abandon their propriettary formats at any time, leaving users in the lurch.
Last fall no less a market leader than Adobe stepped into the fray, introducing its Digital Negative (DNG) RAW specification as an alternative to the closed, manufacturer-specific RAW formats then proliferating like fruit flies on a hot afternoon. It also added the DNG Converter software, to convert propriety formats to DNG and provided a RAW plugin for Photoshop. All camera manufacturers had to do was switch to saving their camera's files in DNG and life would be good again. Sounded great. In theory.
Well, life being what it is, seems the camera companies weren't too anxious to relinquish control and bet the digital farm on Adobe's patented spec. Which is where the title of this post, the original author of which was the ever-quotable Marquis de Sade, comes in (you were wondering, weren't you?). The Masters of the Digital Universe Previously Known as Adobe have clearly not been able to seduce the manufacturers, and after a brief flush of naive optimism users have gone back to focusing their attention on the RAW specs of the camera manufacturers.
A notable instance of this is the recently launched OpenRAW.org web site, founded by the OpenRAW group. The site states the situation concisely: "A common, openly documented RAW format would fulfill many of the goals of OpenRAW, but is likely to face significant resistance from manufacturers who feel their "creativity" and ability to innovate would be constrained. Open documentation of all RAW file formats by manufacturers is the quickest and most satisfactory way for OpenRAW's goals to be reached."
Well, I'm with them, and if you're a digital photographer I encourage you to visit their site and add your voice to the growing clamor for the camera companies to keep innovating while using strictly open, documented RAW file specs.
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
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