Hi Garry,
You're welcome
I understand you want to stay as flexible and open as possible to what software you use for editing your images (I do too). However, the problem here is that none of the raw converters are compatible so once you choose a raw converter, you can not really switch unless you redo all your work in the new program. This actually sounds worse than it probably is as you likely do not need to revisit all your files regularly. And I know how this works; I used to do all my editing with Capture NX2, Nikon's own editor, but since they basically ditched it for something really mediocre, I had to switch away from that.
After some research I ended up going with ACR. As my complete workflow was based on PM, I really needed my edits to be visible to me. That's how I ended up with converting my raws to DNG. As with that, the embedded preview gets updated with ACR (and Lightroom, but there it's a manual task). A while ago I wrote a
blog on this with some more info.
Note: As DNG is an open file format, I am not too fussed about lock in with Adobe; if necessary I could always switch.
Now to answer your questions,
- Conversion to JPG is indeed very much a one way process. You would typically only do that at the very end of your process e.g. if you need to hand over your work to someone else or publish it to the Internet.
- I too was very reluctant to migrate to DNG, but as it is quite a well developed format now (which is even used by some cameras as their raw format!), I found that making the switch was a pretty safe bet. Besides, for me the alternatives were not really an option anyway.
- Though DNG files in general are smaller than the original raw file, I have not seen any difference in quality, none at all.
- There are other raw converters that do support DNG and my thinking is that this number will only grow.
My workflow is now purely based on DNG and I am very, very happy about that.
Note: as part of my backup strategy, next to backing up all my work images, I also maintain a set of “pure” original raws (files basically only touched by PM's ingest). While I have needed these to recover from corruption issues, this was not due to DNG or ACR, but due to bugs in Nikon's own editing software... So basically you would not need them at all, but if like me you like some extra extra guarantee, you might want to invest in an extra disk for this purpose too. But this actually hasn't got much to do with you switching your workflow
Hopefully this answers your questions, but if not, feel free to ask for more info!
