Request: DNG converter

I’ve been testing RawTherapee lately and as a Fuji shooter I’m absolutely amazed by the fantastic rendering of X-trans files! It’s the best I’ve seen and I’ve tested most of the major/popular softwares. So detailed and sharp, yet natural looking. I’m so happy to see that there’s finally a developer that has been able to perfect X-trans files.
However, I must sadly say that I’m not that big of a fan of the actual software. I’m a longtime Lightroom user and that’s where I get the best results.
This is why I would love to see a DNG converter from RawTherapee to be able to get that amazing X-trans demosaicing even when working in other softwares. I would definitely even pay for it.

It’s there already, it’s called a TIFF file.

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A TIFF isn’t the same thing as a RAW file. While it might be lossless, it doesn’t contain as much information as a RAW file and can’t be manipulated as much.

hi @jayphizzt,
can you elaborate on what you mean please? :thinking:

You can for example read about it here:

Or here:

You can just google it as well and you’ll find plenty of info on it.

I thought you wanted to use RT for demosaicing, don’t you? after that, a dng and a tiff contain essentially the same data (metadata might be more convenient in a dng, especially if you don’t want to apply wb in RT), but there is no data loss.

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Neither is a demosaiced image stored in a TIFF/EP container called DNG. It’s about as raw as canned tomatoes.

Bottom line is that if you want to use RT’s demosaicing and do further processing in LR, use >=16-bit TIFF or PNG.

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yet you say,

Just pointing that out… maybe you are bound to LR because it costs or is costing you money. RT is not costing you money, but is too different than LR for you to be able to compare.

The original poster wants to export a demosaiced image (with possibly some sharpening, noise reduction and CA removal) as a linear DNG. White balance, exposure and tone mapping could then be done in a software that suits the poster’s preferences. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request. The Kalpanika converter does this for Sigma files, for example.

Once the data is demosaiced, the content of the DNG will be tiff… what is the DNG gaining you over just exporting a high bit depth tiff?

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