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DexterG-wZOt9z
DexterG-wZOt9z
Inspiring
November 18, 2017
Answered

File names in catalog are wrong after running Convert photo to DNG

  • November 18, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 458 views

After successfully running "Convert photos to DNG" on a folder of tiff files, when I reimport the original tiff images they are shown not as .tif files but as .dng files. The following screenshots show first the actual DNG image and then the TIF file incorrectly named ".dng". The metadata panel on the right clearly shows that one image's file type is Digital Negative and the other is Tiff.

Lightroom also falsely reports that the metadata was changed externally when it wasn't; after Converting to DNG, I simply Synchronized the folder to re-import the original tiff files. If I view the folder in Bridge, it confirms that the original tiff files are still named ".tif" and that their creation and modified dates are unchanged.

Removing the tiff images from the catalog results in the DNG images being removed too; which proves that there is some kind of database corruption going on which results in both files being treated as one and the same. Fortunately, if you remove the entire folder, exit Lightroom, and then re-import the folder, the corruption seems to be repaired and Lightroom correctly identifies the DNG and tiff as separate and gives each the correct names, ".dng" and ".tif" respectively.

I have confirmed the same misnaming on re-import with jpeg files that have been converted to DNG. And even worse, I inadvertently discovered that if you make develop module or even metadata changes to the jpg files, it will corrupt the DNG files which the jpegs have been erroneously named as. This resulted in a whole folder of jpeg files converted to DNG files being rendered useless; I had to delete both the .dng and .jpg files and start over. Luckily I had a backup copy of the original jpeg files. But still, it took me several hours to figure out what had gone wrong and how to fix it. The symptoms of this DNG file corruption were that whenever you tried to save changes to the DNG file, either metadata or develop, it would say "Cannot write XMP data" and never save the changes to file.

I wonder how many other people have experienced this problem?

By the way, I'm using the latest version of Lightroom Classic CC, version 7.0.1, running on Windows 10, version 1709.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jao vdL

You really do NOT want to convert non-raw files to dng. That can only cause problems. There is absolutely no reason to do that. Second, if you convert tif or jpeg files inside Lightroom to dng, the original tif or jpg will be seen as a sidecar file. If your really want to do this, you need to turn on the "treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos" in Preferences->General. That option also applies to tif files next to raw type files.

Really you do not want to convert jpegs and tifs to dng. There is no good reason to do that.

2 replies

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
November 19, 2017

You really do NOT want to convert non-raw files to dng. That can only cause problems. There is absolutely no reason to do that. Second, if you convert tif or jpeg files inside Lightroom to dng, the original tif or jpg will be seen as a sidecar file. If your really want to do this, you need to turn on the "treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos" in Preferences->General. That option also applies to tif files next to raw type files.

Really you do not want to convert jpegs and tifs to dng. There is no good reason to do that.

Just Shoot Me
Just Shoot Me
Legend
November 18, 2017

What program did you use to do the converting?

Not sure why you are converting TIFF files to DNG's. No good reason to do that IMHO.

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