I've been thinking of converting my archives of photos over to DNG and here's the reason:
I still use Lightroom mainly, but I've become interested in using other software like On1 Photo Raw (which I bought, and use as a filter now), and Luminar, especially when the new DAM arrives. I'd be thrilled to not use LR because it always seems to be in the way, especially for the DAM.
Until now, On1 required that you convert your whole library over to their format, meaning you could not go back and forth. Now they've tuned their process to try and figure out the LR look when you convert (in the next version).
Not sure what Luminar would do.
Also not sure how well these packages will pick up LR settings in the DNG.
But: I'm also tired of going back to my archives to do some cleaning (deletes, harvesting, etc.) and having LR show me the RAW files in the folder and then 1 minute or so later, slowly start to pick up the edits from the sidecars. That doesn't happen with DNG (I believe). Plus, if you want to move things around outside of LR, you have to be careful to take the sidecars with.
Now my negatives, as always: 1) I backup the RAWs, but I will need to go get them from backups to validate any entries in archival challenges, 2) when you touch the DNG file, e.g., changing the photo settings or the keywords, your backup system has to backup the DNG rather than the smaller sidecar. That's always been a big downer for me.
Are you using converted DNGs? How have you made out? What are your up's and downs, pro's and cons?
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