Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

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Brianna Laugher

21 Nov 2007 21 Nov '07

12:55 p.m.

- Commons currently doesn't accept any RAW formats for uncompressed original digital photography files. - DNG is a RAW format developed by Adobe, intended to be an open format. http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/index.html - ImageMagick supports DNG. http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php - Format "patent license": http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/license.html Is this acceptable? If the terms of the DNG format are acceptable, is there any reason we shouldn't request MW support for this format to be enabled and begin encouraging photographers to start using it? (I presume thumbnails would be generated as JPGs) If we do this, are we likely to require an increase in the maximum filesize limit? (currently 20mb) I emailed with a magazine publisher recently and he made this comment about Commons: "There are indeed, some amazing images. I definitely believe that publishers could use this resource if they're in need of (one more image) to complete an existing project. But I'm uncertain about how publishable much of the content is, especially in the absence of higher resolution files (which disqualifies printing). " 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. regards, Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

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David Gerard

21 Nov 21 Nov

1:01 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

cc'd to foundation-l for inspection by the querulous. We allow PDFs, don't we? Are they under any similar terms?

...

If the terms of the DNG format are acceptable, is there any reason we shouldn't request MW support for this format to be enabled and begin encouraging photographers to start using it? (I presume thumbnails would be generated as JPGs)

Assuming the licence isn't problematic, that'd be fantastic IMO. Need a bigger upload limit. - d.

Andrew Gray

1:43 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

"There are indeed, some amazing images. I definitely believe that publishers could use this resource if they're in need of (one more image) to complete an existing project. But I'm uncertain about how publishable much of the content is, especially in the absence of higher resolution files (which disqualifies printing). " 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.

Careful not to jump two steps there :-) We mainly don't have higher resolution image files because people aren't uploading high-resolution image files to start with, not because the high-resolution JPGs or TIFFs which we have Just Aren't Good Enough(TM). (Do we allow TIFFs?) Allowing the upload of RAW files would certainly be a good thing (if we have the capacity, which I assume we do), but it'll probably mean that our high-end stuff gets better, not that we make substantially more content publishable. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Rama Rama

2:20 p.m.

I'll follow a little bit on Andrew's comment to say that I am not sure that I see the correlation between high resolution (fit for printing) and RAW images. RAW allows you to develop an optimal JPEG image, possibly better than what the automatic settings of the camera produce, or what an inexperienced (or colour-blind, ...) photographer could do. But I don't think that it will bring more *resolution*. This stems from using high-hand cameras, or high-hand scanners (and appropriate analog toolchain), or stitching images. -- Rama

David Gerard

2:23 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

(Do we allow TIFFs?)

Not presently. "TIFF" is a container format, which might have all manner of undefined toxic waste inside. With stuff like Library of Congress TIFFs, I upload a pixel-identical PNG. - d.

Oldak Quill

3:02 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 21/11/2007, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

And people aren't uploading high-resolution image files because they can't. If the upload limit were increased, there are plenty of US-govt TIFFs that could be added to Commons and greatly improve our usability. The 20MB upload limit has come up a fair few times on these mailing lists and the only objections I remember relate to whether we have the resources to handle larger files. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any problems in doubling our upload limit to 40MB straight away to enable more/better quality image and sound files to be uploaded. We should further discuss and investigate the impact of raising the limit further so we can start storing reasonable film formats and files (I, personally, cannot wait until the limit is high enough to allow us to provide reasonable quality early silent films). Ideally, the upload limit will eventually be high enough to allow us to provide lossless data files (with classical music movements of up to ~20MB, this would need to be up to 100 MB lossless music in FLAC format). The feasibility of serving 100MB files over HTTP still needs to be discussed, but I can't see how a 40MB limit would cause us any problems or cost us significant resources. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

David Gerard

3:08 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Ideally, the upload limit will eventually be high enough to allow us to provide lossless data files (with classical music movements of up to ~20MB, this would need to be up to 100 MB lossless music in FLAC format). The feasibility of serving 100MB files over HTTP still needs to be discussed, but I can't see how a 40MB limit would cause us any problems or cost us significant resources.

I've forwarded your message to wikitech-l asking what the practical issues would be with upping the limit, e.g. if the servers would melt. - d.

Oldak Quill

3:22 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 21/11/2007, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I've forwarded your message to wikitech-l asking what the practical issues would be with upping the limit, e.g. if the servers would melt.

Thank you, hopefully we can reach a couple of conclusions and see something happen if consensus is achieved. Just to clarify my last post, when I stated "with classical music movements of up to ~20MB, this would need to be up to 100 MB lossless music in FLAC format", I meant to say "with classical music movements of up to ~20 MINUTES...". I've either had too much coffee today or not enough sleep; I'll read what I write a little more carefully :) -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Artur Fijałkowski

5:03 p.m.

We can accept 1GB RAW files and 20 GB JPEG files, but this really doesn't change much in pictures. Many-many contributors don't see why they should upload 10 MPIX photo, when they can downsample it before uploading to 0.5 MPIX. 'This is enough resolution for web publishing, isn't it?' they say. So first step should be teaching users and then giving them 'most sophisticated file format possible (TM)' ;) AJF/WarX

Delphine Ménard

5:09 p.m.

On Nov 21, 2007 6:03 PM, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few actually do. Well, I don't :-)

...

So first step should be teaching users and then giving them 'most sophisticated file format possible (TM)' ;)

Agreed. Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will get lost. Please use my wikimedia.org address.

David Gerard

5:13 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few actually do. Well, I don't :-)

Serious photographers tend to if they can. - d.

Artur Fijałkowski

6:03 p.m.

2007/11/21, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few actually do. Well, I don't :-)

Serious photographers tend to if they can.

And most of our photographers aren't 'serious' cause they don't have money for such cameras ;) I'll send large package of great cookies to anyone who write good text 'why you should upload not downsampled images to Wikimedia Projects' AJF/WarX

David Gerard

6:08 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2007/11/21, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

> Serious photographers tend to if they can.

...

And most of our photographers aren't 'serious' cause they don't have money for such cameras ;)

I will happily accept a dSLR from anyone who wants to send me one! My Ixus 50 has a cracked screen anyway; an EOS 400D would be *just* the thing. I promise to, er, take pictures. And stuff.

...

I'll send large package of great cookies to anyone who write good text 'why you should upload not downsampled images to Wikimedia Projects'

Will you send me an EOS 400D? :-D I suppose I could try to start one anyway ;-) - d.

Artur Fijałkowski

6:10 p.m.

2007/11/21, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Will you send me an EOS 400D? :-D

Only cookies

...

I suppose I could try to start one anyway ;-)

Would be nice. AJF/WarX

Jastrow

6:37 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

Le 11/21/07 7:03 PM, Artur Fijałkowski a écrit :

...

> On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital >> camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few >> actually do. >> Well, I don't :-)

I do :-p

...

Serious photographers tend to if they can.

And most of our photographers aren't 'serious' cause they don't have money for such cameras ;)

DSLRs are much less expensive now than they used to be, but native RAW pictures are unusable if undeveloped. Which means the user has to buy a software and develop each of their pictures. I know you can batch process your pictures but still, it takes time. As a whole I tend to agree with Rama: I don't see how allowing DNG will bring us more resolution. Jastrow

Stan Shebs

7:07 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

Jastrow wrote:

...

[...] native RAW pictures are unusable if undeveloped. Which means the user has to buy a software and develop each of their pictures. I know you can batch process your pictures but still, it takes time.

Worse, it's not a totally mechanizable process - typically the photographer needs to exercise some judgement as to how to produce an image that corresponds to what the scene actually looked like when the data was captured. Given that a couple of my pictures have been mangled by well-meaning people that weren't actually there when I took them, I'm a little skeptical that random wikignomes will be able to do the right thing. I could see raw files uploaded alongside an "official" image - the official image is what the photographer thinks the scene really looked like, and republishers could then tinker with the raw file as desired, whether it is to match the official image, or to alter it to meet some other need. (How does cropping figure into all this? Almost every one of my uploads is cropped, sometimes by quite a lot. Does anybody really want multiple megabytes of out-of-focus background shrubbery? :-) ) Stan

David Gerard

7:12 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

...

Yes, that's exactly it. The nicely cropped JPEG may be more suitable for our daily use, but the original file (PNG or TIFF or DNG) is of value for making better derivatives from. I'll tend to note on the JPEG "nice crop of xxx.png, please use that for derivatives." I suppose you could have a DNG, your own PNG developed from it and then a perfectly cropped and tweaked JPEG for actual use, all linked.

...

(How does cropping figure into all this? Almost every one of my uploads is cropped, sometimes by quite a lot. Does anybody really want multiple megabytes of out-of-focus background shrubbery? :-)

They might! You never know! - d.

geni

8:15 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Might need to change the wording that results when you do this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:P%26A_betweenChichesterandArundel.p… to explain things.

...

They might! You never know!

They don't. Additionally a lot of our photos come from camera phones and the like. High res stuff tends to come from a very small number of users NASA or scans. There isn't much you can do about this. -- geni

Matthew Brown

9:50 p.m.

On Nov 21, 2007 12:15 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

They might! You never know!

While it may not encourage the upload of larger, higher-res files, it doesn't hurt to allow it for those users that would do so. It also doesn't hurt to let users know that we'd LIKE their high res files; I think this is a bit unclear. -Matt

peter green

7:17 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

...

(How does cropping figure into all this? Almost every one of my uploads is cropped, sometimes by quite a lot. Does anybody really want multiple megabytes of out-of-focus background shrubbery? :-) )

Sometimes you want to adjust the aspect ratio of an image (say to make it fill the width of a wide taxobox without taking up too much height). If you don't have an orginal with plenty of background to work on this is much harder (since you would have to create more background or lift the foreground image onto a new background).

Oldak Quill

7:26 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, peter green <plugwash(a)p10link.net> wrote:

...

(How does cropping figure into all this? Almost every one of my uploads is cropped, sometimes by quite a lot. Does anybody really want multiple megabytes of out-of-focus background shrubbery? :-) )

A user may want to crop an image containing multiple objects down to just one object. A high resolution image of a building could be cropped down to just show a distinctive window to go in a Wikipedia article about that style of window (no other free alternative?). If the image is high resolution, the cropped image showing just the window would still be good enough quality to use in the article. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Jastrow

7:38 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

Le 11/21/07 8:26 PM, Oldak Quill a écrit :

...

I still don't see how allowing DNG will bring us higher resolution pictures. High-resolution, 300dpi JPEG files do exist. Photo magazines usually accept TIFF and JPEG files. Jastrow

Oldak Quill

8:49 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

...

Le 11/21/07 8:26 PM, Oldak Quill a écrit :

I still don't see how allowing DNG will bring us higher resolution pictures. High-resolution, 300dpi JPEG files do exist. Photo magazines usually accept TIFF and JPEG files.

Sorry, I wasn't talking about file formats - purely the benefits of high resolution. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Brianna Laugher

22 Nov 22 Nov

midnight

On 22/11/2007, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

...

Le 11/21/07 8:26 PM, Oldak Quill a écrit :

I still don't see how allowing DNG will bring us higher resolution pictures. High-resolution, 300dpi JPEG files do exist. Photo magazines usually accept TIFF and JPEG files.

As someone else said, providing the RAW format allows a reuser to optimise it for various print qualities, rather than optimising for screen (and probably smaller file size at that). And I didn't make that quote up. :) Whether or not there is any discernible difference, (at least some) publishers feel there is. I'm inclined to trust them on that point rather than insist that JPG ought to be good enough. cheers, Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

Joichi Ito

1:17 a.m.

RAW formats can have higher dynamic range. One camera I have has 16 bits of color. CaptureOne, for instance, doesn't manage RAW in RGB space. It keeps the B&W and color data in different data spaces until it "prints" it into jpg. It's feasible that you might have two objects in two different lighting conditions in the same photo - for instance, a person in a shadow in the foreground and a building in the background. With the RAW you could crop, extract and correctly expose both objects. If you rendered into jpg you'd lose a lot of the information when you fixed the exposure. I guess the question is how much "archival" of this sort of raw data you want in the commons. You could always just ask the photographer to do the processing for the various versions of the images. On Nov 22, 2007, at 9:00 AM, Brianna Laugher wrote:

...

On 22/11/2007, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

Le 11/21/07 8:26 PM, Oldak Quill a écrit :

I still don't see how allowing DNG will bring us higher resolution pictures. High-resolution, 300dpi JPEG files do exist. Photo magazines usually accept TIFF and JPEG files.

Jastrow

23 Nov 23 Nov

10:45 a.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

Le 11/22/07 1:00 AM, Brianna Laugher a écrit :

...

As someone else said, providing the RAW format allows a reuser to optimise it for various print qualities, rather than optimising for screen (and probably smaller file size at that).

This is a feature of the RAW format. As far as I know, it doesn't have anything to do with high resolution.

...

And I didn't make that quote up. :) Whether or not there is any discernible difference, (at least some) publishers feel there is. I'm inclined to trust them on that point rather than insist that JPG ought to be good enough.

Brianna, apparently your contact mentioned DNG, but the excerpt you quoted only mentions "higher resolution files". 300dpi JPEG files are not "just good enough". They're high resolution files. Now, if we want to follow the standard of the printing industry, the priority would be to allow TIFF files. I agree adding DNG to our list of supported file types would be a good thing but I seriously doubt that it will bring Commons more high resolution files. It would be more useful, I think, to educate our users not to downsample, and so on. This thread reminds me of our discussion about colour management and how users were to be encouraged to shoot RAW and use a colour chart. It was a good idea, of course, but it seemed a bit premature when the vast majority of our users never pay attention to white balance or don't even know what it is. Jastrow

Brianna Laugher

3:02 p.m.

On 23/11/2007, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

...

I agree adding DNG to our list of supported file types would be a good thing but I seriously doubt that it will bring Commons more high resolution files. It would be more useful, I think, to educate our users not to downsample, and so on.

I don't see why we can't do both those things? There are a few dozen, maybe as many as 100, regular, highly valuable contributors who likely do shoot RAW and would upload RAW files as an archival record if nothing else, if we gave them the opportunity. That's not a great number but it will rise in time. I brought this issue up because someone brought it up on the VP, and [[commons talk:file types]]. I wasn't aware until then that we had a suitable RAW format, ie open standard. Now that we do (? no one has raised any objections?), I believe it would be of great benefit to the project to give people the option to be able to upload this format if they wish. Anyway I think we both arrive at the same conclusion. :) cheers Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

Matthew Brown

5:38 p.m.

On Nov 23, 2007 2:45 AM, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

...

Le 11/22/07 1:00 AM, Brianna Laugher a écrit :

As someone else said, providing the RAW format allows a reuser to optimise it for various print qualities, rather than optimising for screen (and probably smaller file size at that).

This is a feature of the RAW format. As far as I know, it doesn't have anything to do with high resolution.

I suspect someone said 'resolution' when what they actually meant was that RAW contains every bit of original data available without any losses due to processing. 'Resolution' could refer to several different properties of an image. I suspect what was being directly meant was 10- or 12-bit color values, rather than 8-bit in most processed formats. As someone mentioned upthread, TIFF is a problematic format to support since it is just a container for many different data formats. -Matt

peter green

7:53 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

...

Afaict it is rare for a photographic TIFF to contain more information than can be stored exactly in a PNG. PNG is a much saner format than TIFF for a project like commons. What we do need though is the ability to choose thumbnail parameters other than size. e.g. have a png in storage but generate JPEG thumbnails from it.

Jastrow

24 Nov 24 Nov

11:34 a.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

Le 11/23/07 8:53 PM, peter green a écrit :

...

Afaict it is rare for a photographic TIFF to contain more information than can be stored exactly in a PNG. PNG is a much saner format than TIFF for a project like commons.

Is PNG accepted/known to the printing industry? Jastrow

Matthew Brown

2:44 p.m.

On Nov 24, 2007 3:34 AM, Jastrow <jastrow(a)pip-pip.org> wrote:

...

Is PNG accepted/known to the printing industry?

Since it's known to Adobe professional tools, I imagine it is. -Matt

Andrew Gray

21 Nov 21 Nov

7:36 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

...

(How does cropping figure into all this? Almost every one of my uploads is cropped, sometimes by quite a lot. Does anybody really want multiple megabytes of out-of-focus background shrubbery? :-) )

If enwp's featured-article process has taught me anything, it's that we apparently value vast amounts of slightly out-of-focus shrubbery used as filler! ;-) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Oldak Quill

6:45 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2007/11/21, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:

On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few actually do. Well, I don't :-)

Serious photographers tend to if they can.

I really don't understand your argument against higher resolution images. It might be the case that most people wouldn't upload a larger file if they had the alternative and most might not be aware what benefits larger files bring. If this is true, it isn't a good reason to not raise the limit and it isn't a good reason to not encourage higher resolution images. Several of the advantages of higher resolution images have already been mentioned in this thread by other posters, but here are a few. 1) The most important reason is that the higher the resolution of the image, the more uses it can be put to. Only images of sufficiently high resolution can be used in print (a resolution far higher than the average resolution on WF projects at the moment). The higher the resolution of an image, the greater the range of sizes it can be resized to when it is used and the greater its capacity to be cropped. A 200 kilopixel image is severely limited in the range of sizes it can be implemented in before it becomes pixelated and could only be put to use on the web. A 20 megapixel image can be used on the web and in print without looking pixelated. Further, it could be used in print in a range of sizes without degrading in quality (e.g. as a small picture in a book or a large element in a poster). The greater the diversity of uses our content has, the more useful our contributions become. 2) Resolution, which is the issue here, is the ability to distinguish between elements in an image - higher resolution makes the very content of the image more valuable. 3) We have software on our servers to downsample images depending on how we wish to invoke them. If a 5 MB image is used in an article as a thumbnail, the reader will not have to download 5MB of data. The image is downsampled to, e.g., 50KB. You seem to be suggesting that the uploader only bother to upload the 50KB image. The image would still be useful on the web, but it couldn't be used for much else. If it costs the servers a lot to downsample large images, then we could use a bot to download high resolution images, resample them and upload smaller versions for use on the web. 4) Leading on from the last point. Commons both serves other Wikimedia projects and is an archive unto itself. Printable images are useful for both printed versions of WF projects (e.g. Wikipedia Readers) and for people using Commons as an archive for entirely different purposes (e.g. a student trying to find an image to include in a poster). The higher the resolution of an image, the greater the capacity of the image to fulfill the goals of Wikimedia Commons. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

David Sifry

9:37 p.m.

New subject: Allow Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format on Commons? (and increase filesize limit)

I shoot exclusively in RAW, then convert to DNG and JPG... Dave David Gerard wrote:

...

On 21/11/2007, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

How many people actually use any kind of RAW format on their digital camera should be the first question we ask. My take is that very few actually do. Well, I don't :-)

Serious photographers tend to if they can. - d. _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Oldak Quill

6:15 p.m.

On 21/11/2007, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I don't think everyone needs to be aware of the problem before a solution is implemented. There are plenty of people who would like to be able to upload larger files and are aware that this would help the WF and her projects. It doesn't matter that most users wouldn't upload a 10MB file - many would and it would help the project to have these files available. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Matthew Brown

9:48 p.m.

On Nov 21, 2007 7:02 AM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

We mainly don't have higher resolution image files because people aren't uploading high-resolution image files to start with, not because the high-resolution JPGs or TIFFs which we have Just Aren't Good Enough(TM).

Generally I've processed Library of Congress TIFFs to JPEGs because the vast majority of our users will not want to download a 20GB image. Ideally, I suppose, we should allow the upload of both a source image and a processed version 'for use' - the source image could be PNG for those natively available in TIFF, or DNG for those natively available in a RAW format. -Matt

Brianna Laugher

11:54 p.m.

On 22/11/2007, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 21/11/2007, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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.

Careful not to jump two steps there :-)

[...]

...

Allowing the upload of RAW files would certainly be a good thing (if we have the capacity, which I assume we do), but it'll probably mean that our high-end stuff gets better, not that we make substantially more content publishable.

Correct. The vast majority of people will continue to contribute JPGs, and probably pretty ordinary ones at that. But for the dozens of FP/QI-level contributors, who are probably shooting RAW rather than JPG anyway, it makes sense to ask for and accept RAW from those people. Point and clicks don't even offer RAW. It's not going to be like "everyone must start using DNG". :) cheers, Brianna -- They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment: http://modernthings.org/

Stephen Bain

2:25 p.m.

On Nov 21, 2007 11:55 PM, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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- 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.

...

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(a)gmail.com

Barcex

2:56 p.m.

2007/11/21, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

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.

The disadvantage is that RAW files will not be directly usable in Wikimedia projects. RAW images can be processed automatically and transformed on the fly into JPGs, but the quality will not be good in most cases. So even uploading RAW, someone has also to upload a processed JPG file in order to have an usable copy. I'm not saying we should not allow RAW pictures, I'm just saying that we should not encourage to upload RAW-only versions. Or... we should have a team with enough expertise to produce good quality JPGs from that RAW pictures. Barcex

Stephen Bain

3:02 p.m.

On Nov 22, 2007 1:56 AM, Barcex <barcexwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Yes, especially considering their size. It would be very handy to have, for example, copies of all featured pictures in RAW format, especially since these are more likely to be used in non-web contexts. -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

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participants (16)

Andrew Gray
Artur Fijałkowski
Barcex
Brianna Laugher
David Gerard
David Sifry
Delphine Ménard
geni
Jastrow
Joichi Ito
Matthew Brown
Oldak Quill
peter green
Rama Rama
Stan Shebs
Stephen Bain