P: Support cataloging PNG files in Lightroom

Rob Cole says:
"excluding support for importing png: they don't come from cameras"

No, but there's loads and loads of software out there that generated PNG for one or the other reason. Lightroom doesn't neccesarily have to import directly from a camera - it's perfectly reasonable to import photos from another source.

In fact, photos may even come from an external source. A partner or customer may be providing pictures in PNG format, because of its obvious advantages. It's very unprofessional to simply state "I cannot work with your files, try again". Any self-respecting imaging program, ANY one of them, must be able to handle the two utmost basic formats: JPEG and PNG. Anything else is a bonus. For Lightroom, RAW would be essential as well.

Lightroom is intrinsically multiuser, because its catalog and settings are stored in the user's profile.

Yeah, Adobe, support importing PNG already! What where you thinking to deliberately not allow this? Who the frak do you think you are dictating what formats photographers must use?!

"Photographer file formats" has no meaning. That is no different than saying that paper is a photographer's medium, not bits. It is an empty statement that attempts to stop a conversation, implying that the speaker knows a special something that the listener SHOULD know. It is absurd.

There's absolutely no reason why Lightroom should not support the PNG format. It is a well documented format, and carries with it no licensing fees.

PNG is a good and spread format. Why not support it. The "pro-photographers only" argument seams rather weak, since it is simply not true. As others point out, there's a demand for this and this request thread is proof.

Lightroom is great for organizing all kind of images. Why gifs and png are unsupported is beyond me.

Please also support BMP. I know it's real basic old stuff that no one would use for a photo today, but many BMPs exist in my library and why should I have to go back through time and redo them all as tiffs? Come on, you know how to read BMPs. All your other products do it.

Export of BMPs would be nice also as sometimes to create a wallpaper or graphic for use in other applications it needs to be a BMP.

If I scan a slide to a PNG, does that mean it did not come from a camera? The argument (not Rob's) that PNGs are not useful/essential to photographers is just stupid... especially since LR supports PNGs for e.g. watermarks, so you have the ridiculous situation that LR can use, but not catalog, PNGs.

Bingo. By the way, TIFF defines ways to use the Kodak DCS and Nikon NEF compression schemes, as well as those from the well-known type of "cameras" called "fax machines"!

Chris Cox may want to follow his own advice.

For example, how good is TIFF at supporting 64 bit color depths? (Oh, not at all). And the _published_ version of TIFF would appear to be limited to 32 bit file sizes, so it doesn't (contrary to Chris' claim) support "exabyte sized files", etc.

But he also totally fails to see the point: the issue is not "one file format to rule them all", but one of "what's the best file format for my particular set of priorities". And until everyone's smartphones and tablets and out-of-the-box computers natively support displaying all TIFF files, and LibTIFF (or whatever Chris likes) is used universally, it is a suboptimal choice for many purposes.

[ Note: "suboptimal" doesn't mean "unusable". ]

I don't really see any reason why Lightroom should be for "photographer file formats" only. It's a great tool to organize your photos - in whatever format they may be. And PNG is a popular format. Voting for PNG support.