Topaz Photo does not accept the HDR merged output as a valid DNG

Question

I use DJI drones, and their RAW format is DNG. Lightroom Classic is quite happy to accept these and successfully does an HDR merge on them. The output is once more DNG (or allegedly is).

I use Topaz Photo to pre-process my images before doing most of my processing on Lightroom Classic. Topaz quite happily accepts DNG files straight from the drone. However, if I pass it a DNG that HDR Merge has generated, Topaz rejects the image as being an unsupported format.

So it looks as if LRC is generating DNG files that do not quite meet Adobe’s own DNG specification in some way that neither Topaz or I understand.

I use Windows 11 and the very latest LRC.

JohanElzenga · Answer

Merged HDR DNG are linear rgb files. That has the advantage that even though they are not raw files, they do behave like raw files. You can still set the white balance in Kelvin, and you can still use all the raw profiles. Apparently Topaz does not support these DNG files, so I agree with ​@AxelMattthat this is a Topaz problem, not an Adobe problem and certainly not a Lightroom bug.

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