Hello,
I’m currently collecting experiences to switch from Lightroom to … may be DT
The most of my pictures are DNG from 2 sources:
Conversion in LR from Canon .CR2 RAW
from Handy LG V30
So I did the following observation. If I do a crop in LR at an DLG file and do afterwards an import to DT the crop is not recognized from DT.
If I do the same procedure with an .CR2 file (not converted to DNG) the crop is recognized.
Does DT consider the internal XMP file information of DNG files?
If not, is there a way to reconvert DNG in a RAW format? I’m not quite sure if it would help for the problem.
Hello @Thomas_Do ,
thanks for your replay.
As I said the main goal is to switch from Lightroom to an alternative. And I want to find out how much of my work from LR I can take with me in to DT. I spent a lot of time and read really a lot of articles, also here and I know there is no 1:1 change, but for example the crop, so I read it, is 100% possible, isn’t it.
My question above is:
For .CR2 files the crop works fine, whilst for DNG files seems to be not. Is this for DNG files not implemented or do I something wrong.
Hope this clarifies a bit more?
Regards Andreas
As far as I know, darktable does not read processing information from dngs. You’d be much better off with the original CR2 files and an XMP sidecar file, both for transfer of settings from Light room and just in general.
You may need to do some digging in the forum, but I think I remember somebody with the same problem. Long story short: darktable won’t use the xmp embedded, but if you manage to export it to a real sidecar it will.
He frequents this forum so you might hear back from him as I tagged him……I just recall that he offered some time ago to check things out for someone regarding an Adobe issue ….since many people here don’t have access to it….
Thank you guys for your try to help.
I think I will do like I read in these forum or a similar place:
Export all my pictures I processed in Lightroom as TIFF 16bit and moving on in DT.
@Andreas To be blunt, you are going to have to start from scratch. darktable (dt) is superficially similar to LR in its interface, cataloguing and XMP. As you will discover, dt’s sidecars are very different from LR’s because the apps are different. Most of us here aren’t interested in cross-compatibility. Adobe isn’t interested either, which is why exporting your existing edits to TIF is the way to go as a backup option. But moving forward, you will have to edit in dt and forget about comparing features.
Thanks and I echo everything you say. I was just wondering if there was any chance that his cropping could be saved that is why I mentioned that you might be able to check…If he has converted most of his raw files to DNG and has cropped compositions for a large number of images …if even only that could be migrated it might be nice but I think likely you would just confirm what he is seeing on that front. He can still preserve the crops in his exported Tiffs just wont be able to recompose those ones after back to a different crop unless he keeps the raw files…
Dt takes care of the DefaultUserCrop exif tags if those have been written to the dng file. It won’t crop automatically but if you open an image in darkroom and use the crop tool you will see those available. Also you can check for the existing tag via
No crop support via lightroom (or other apps) sidecar.
