Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [71]
Forward compatibility for raw files
Adobe's policy is to provide on-going Camera Raw support throughout the life of a particular Photoshop product. This means if you bought Photoshop CS4, you would have been provided with free Camera Raw updates, up until version 5.6. Once a new Photoshop program comes out, Camera Raw support is continued for those new customers only. Consequently, you are obliged to upgrade your version of Photoshop if you wish to take advantage of the support offered for new cameras. However, you won't be completely blocked off from doing so. If you refer to the end of this chapter you can read about the free DNG Converter program that is always released at the same time as any Camera Raw updates. What you can do is to use DNG Converter to convert any supported raw camera format file to DNG. When you do this, the DNG file can then be read by any previous version of Camera Raw.
Now understand that while not all raw camera file formats are supported, this is in no way the fault of Adobe. Certain camera manufacturers have in the past done things like encrypt the white balance data, which makes it difficult for anyone but themselves to decode the raw image data. The Camera Raw team have always done their best to make Camera Raw compatible with the latest digital cameras, but sometimes there have been obstacles which aren't directly Adobe's fault.
DNG compatibility
The DNG file format is an open standard file format for raw camera files. DNG is a file format that was devised by Adobe and there are already a few cameras such as Leica, and most noticeably the Hasselblad H3, that can shoot directly to DNG, plus there are now quite a few raw processor programs that can read DNG, including Camera Raw and Lightroom of course. Basically, DNG files can be read and edited just like any other proprietary raw file format and it is generally regarded as a safe file format to use for archiving your digital master files. For more about the DNG format I suggest you refer to pages 248–250 at the end of this chapter.
Getting raw images into Photoshop
There was a time, not so long ago, when one would simply scan a few photographs, put them in a folder and double-click to open them up in Photoshop. These days most photographers are working with large numbers of images and it is therefore important to be able to import and manage those images efficiently. When Photoshop 7 came along, Adobe introduced the File Browser, which was like an alternative open dialog interface incorporated within Photoshop. The File Browser offered a superior way to manage your images, allowing you to preview and manage multiple images at once. The File Browser was superseded by the Bridge program in Photoshop CS2. As image browser programs go, Bridge's main advantage is that you have ready access to Photoshop. You can open up single or multiple images and apply batch operations all directly from within Bridge. If you compare Bridge with other browser programs, it has enough basic functionality to suit most photographers' needs, although it has to be said that Bridge has yet to provide the full functionality that professional photographers have come to rely on in other programs, such as those which are dedicated to the task of managing large numbers of photographs (such as Lightroom or Aperture).
DNG conversion problems
The DNG conversion process aims to preserve all the proprietary MakerNote information that is contained in the raw original. If the data is there, external DNG-compatible