exporting DNGs with ICC profile baked in & respecting crops
Hello Capture One team, including Jack W Denis Huk Walter Rowe Ian Wilson Brian Jordan and Sharon Leibel !
My team is imaging slides from an archival collection, and we are wanting to produce preservation master files that are DNGs from Capture One in addition to other variants (i.e. TIFs and JPGs). We are using Capture One Pro 23.
We have cropped in to the mounts of the slides and applied a custom-made ICC profile to them, but each time we attempt to export our preservation master files as DNGs, changes are not reflected, as in, the DNGs didn't honor the crops we made or have the ICC profile "baked" into them. There are no issues with the TIFs or JPGs reflecting these changes.
Are adjustments such as crops and ICC profiles not capable of being retained when exporting DNGs from Capture One, or is there a step we're missing?
Thanks for your help!
Ana
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Ana - DNG is just a different raw format. So if I have a Nikon raw file (NEF format) I can convert it to a different raw format (DNG) if I export as DNG. But it is still a raw file and as such doesn't get any adjustments baked in to it.
So you are not missing a step, but what you are attempting to do won't work.
You'll have to think through what you hope may be the future use of your files. 10 or 20 years from now, will you want to be able to re-edit them with whatever tools are available then?
If you want a usable version of the slides that can be viewed by users of the archive, now or in the future, it is likely that they will want to view a JPG file or possibly a TIFF file. They are not likely to want to view a raw file.
My guess is that If you want to preserve the raw file in some way that might be because
- it could be processed again with some tools that are superior to what is available today, or
- you want to have the scan of the slides available in electronic form in such a format as to preserve as much information from the slides as possible, so that if the original physical slides were lost or destroyed you have the best chance of recovering as much of the detail in them as you can.
Maybe there are other reasons I haven't thought of.
It seems to me that there are two future scenarios, as well.
- You have Capture One (presumably in a future version) available
- in this case you could package the adjusted raw file as an EIP and revisit your work on it in the future, or - You don't have Capture One in the future
- in that case you probably need the original raw file. 10 or 20 years from now who knows, for instance what ICC profiles will look like, or what their equivalent will be? Adjustments made with a raw editor (whether Capture One, Lightroom, ON1 or whatever else) are not interchangeable so preserving with the raw file has no particular advantage unless you will be using the same tools.
So the bottom line, as far as I can see, is deciding why you want to preserve the files, and what you imagine might be done with them in the near future, or in the more distant future.
I hope those thoughts help!
Ian
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Adobe stores adjustments in DNG files. Few, if any, other tools do so. Keep in mind that any adjustments stored by a software package will not be useable by any other software package. The best universal format for storing archival images is a high resolution TIFF file with a high bit color depth and large color space alongside the original camera native raw file. This will best reflect the intent while retaining the original camera native raw data. Adobe has tried to convince us that our camera native raw files may not be supported later. To date that has not come true.
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Choosing to not add is different from dropping support. Has Capture One dropped support for a camera?
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By the way, I think it is more suitable to discuss this here than in connection with a user guide article, so I've hidden that discussion.
Ian
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Yes. A quick search online says Adobe now owns TIFF.
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No, Walter: you're regarding the phrase "Adobe has tried to convince us that our camera native raw files may not be supported later" as only having one single meaning. It doesn't.
But here's evidence that in any event your one-sided interpretation is incorrect:
https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/482033-canon-dpp-no-longer-supports-older-bodies/
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1405095
It's a simple, verifiable fact that converters have been known to withdraw RAW support for old bodies.
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Links provided above talk about migrating RAW support to a new codebase, there is no information that this process has not been completed, which would indeed result in some cameras being effectively abandoned, so a statement:
It's a simple, verifiable fact that converters have been known to withdraw RAW support for old bodies.
Still needs any evidence.
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Regarding creation of preservation master files, do you follow any established digitalisation guidelines? FADGI(USA) and Metamorfoze(Netherlands) are established examples to check if you don't. TIFF is most common file format for preservation files. If you want to store raw files just develop them to tiff with all adjustments and store raw as EIP separately. EIP package will include all adjustments( Capture One), metadata, LCC and ICC in one zip file without compression. To be frank most digitalisation projects don't store RAW files after creation of preservation master TIFF files.
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Adobe has tried to convince us that our camera native raw files may not be supported later. To date that has not come true.
Of course it has! Every week there's a post on here complaining that Capture One X won't support camera Y, because the software is too old.
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