[Commons-l] Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

[Stephen Bain]

On Nov 21, 2007 11:55 PM, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> - Format "patent license":
> http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/license.html Is this acceptable?

It seems to allow essentially unlimited use of the file format, on the
condition that you don't try to claim a patent over the format, so it
seems fine to me.

DNG would certainly be vastly preferable to any of the other RAW
formats; essentially each camera manufacturer (or more specifically,
each image sensor manufacturer) has their own RAW format, and the
formats are all incompatible with each other.

> If we do this, are we likely to require an increase in the maximum
> filesize limit? (currently 20mb)

Probably. My sister's camera supports DNG natively, and the DNG files
it outputs are something like 30MB-40MB for a 10 megapixel image, I
think.

> So although our works are usually sufficient for web use, it seems
> clear that we cannot present ourselves as a serious kind of archivist,
> culture-recording project, without introducing a RAW format and
> encouraging people to use it.

The important thing about having a RAW format is that people can
process it again to produce an image that suits their conditions,
which is particularly advantageous for print applications.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com