If you shoot RAW images then the RAW image format you capture will be proprietary to the manufacturer of the camera you are using. Each major manufacturer will have their own format which will probably incompatible with other manufacturer’s format The manufacturer will control that format and may change it at any time. This is not good news for an archive that may be around for many years and have RAW images from any number of cameras from different manufacturers. What is required if a RAW format that is independent and open to all. Adobe saw the need for such a format and came up with DNG. Digital Negative (DNG) is open source so any one can read or write the format and the are no licence restrictions.
ImgArchive support for DNG
ImgArchive supports DNG using a ImgArchive process-raw hook. This hook is called on a RAW image file before being added to the archive. After this hook is call the source directory is scanned for new file with the same name as the one being archived. For example if a RAW file called DSC_1243.nef is being processed then if the process-raw hook creates DSC_1243.dng, ImgArchive will add this to the archive and add it as a side car file of DSC_1243.
Adobe DNG converter
This is a command line tool produced be Adobe to generate DNG files from RAW files. Using –e the tool will not show a options dialog but work only with the command line.
fl ƒ/4.4 7.2 mm 1/103 80 Flash (off, did not fire) Hide EXIF Make - NIKON Orientation - Horizontal (normal) X-Resolution - 300 dpi Y-Resolution - 300 dpi Software - v981p-79 Date and Time (Modified) - 2000:04:21 13:54:30 YCbCr Positioning - Co-sited ISO Speed - 80 Exif Version - 0210 Date and Time (Original) - 2000:04:21 13:54:30 Date and Time (Digitized) - 2000:04:21 13:54:30 Components Configuration - Y, Cb, Cr, - Compressed Bits Per Pixel - 2 Exposure Bias - 0 EV Max Aperture Value - 2.5 Metering Mode - Multi-segment Light Source - Unknown Flashpix Version - 0100 Color Space - sRGB File Source - Digital Camera Scene Type - Directly photographed Quality - 11 Color Mode - 1 Image Adjustment - 0 CCDSensitivity - 0 White Balance - 0 Focus - undef Digital Zoom - 0 Converter - 0 Interop Index - R98 - DCF basic file (sRGB) Interop Version - 0100 Compression - JPEG (old-style) Thumbnail Offset - 2048 Thumbnail Length - 5165 Camera ID - 547 Camera Type - Point and Shoot