Converting to DNG format in Lightroom
If you have read my previous article about DNG format, you may hay decided to convert your photos to Digital Negative format. So how can you do it in Lightroom?
That’s very easy. First of all you have to go to Lightroom Library. Then you have to select photo, which you want to convert. After that go to Library menu and click Convert photo(s) to DNG
This will lead you to following dialog window:
Lets examine options in this window:
- First option is Only convert Raw files. Leave this checked if you want to convert only raw files, and uncheck it if you want to convert your jpegs and TIFFs too.
- Next option is Delete originals after successful conversion. Checking this option will delete your original raw files after conversion. You may want to leave this unchecked to delete these files manually later.
- Next option is File extension. Here you can only select if you want uppercase .DNG or lowercase .dng filename extension. I usually leave default lowercase .dng extension.
- Then goes JPEG Preview. You can select none, Medium Size, and Full Size options. All these options have effect upon resulting file size, and preview availability, and I recommend default Medium Size option too.
- The next option is Image Conversion Method. The options are Preserve Raw Image and Convert to Linear Image. Again I recommend to select default option and leave image in original “mosaic” format, because conversion to linear image is not reversible operation, and is recommended in very rare cases.
- Next you can select whether to use lossless compression or not, and I don’t see any reasons not to use it, because you will gain in file size and won’t loose ant quality.
- The last option is used to include original Raw file in resulting image. In some cases you have to include original raw file for legal or other reasons.
After you press OK button conversion process will get started, and after that process finishes all your processing setting will be transferred to your new DNG files, so all your hard work will be preserved.
