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Fafnisbani
Participant
August 20, 2019
Answered

Export to DNG or JPG?

  • August 20, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 2942 views

I just had a total drive failure, which resulted in me losing all my raw photos.

Luckily most of my work is embedded in .PSD files set on another drive. So now I need to go through them and extract as much image information from the .PSD's as I can for future backup. I am backing up to the cloud and due to constraints, I can not use the .tiff format. I can only use .jpg .png .DNG.

So my questions are: Is the image information in Photoshop embedded into some sort of a file (tiff, jpeg, png)?

If I want to excract the image from a .PSD and retain as much quaility as possible, should I convert my .PSD's to DNG instead of doing full quality (albeit compressed) .jpg/.png?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer davescm

Hi

It sounds like you have lost access to the raw data and only now have the RGB conversions.

The DNG convertor only works with RAW files so you cannot directly convert or save a PSD to a DNG file. You could save a flattened TIFF then open it in Camera RAW in bridge then save as a DNG file but there is little advantage to this

JPEG is not a good format for storing duplicate master files - jpeg compression is lossy. PNG is lossless but will not compress the files (neither jpeg or PNG support layers of course)

Personally, given that none of these give you access to the original RAW data, I would be looking for a different back up solution that allows you to back up the PSDs intact complete with layers

Dave

1 reply

davescm
Community Expert
davescmCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 20, 2019

If your aim is to save the raw files and you genuinely embedded them within the PSD files then you should be able to double click on the smart object in the PSD and when camera raw opens, use "Save Image" in camera raw to save the embedded raw file  as a DNG file. This will save the raw data in the file as a new dng and enable you to retain all the advantages of having access to the original RAW image data.

It is time consuming but will allow you to rebuild your raw file collection.

Dave

    F
    FafnisbaniAuthor
    Participant
    August 20, 2019

    Thanks for the tip Dave! I will definitely use "open as a smart object" in the future but unfortunately all my raw files were executed in PS as images, not smart objects. So that leaves me wondering how much information is retained in the image layer inside PS, if exported to JPG/PNG, will it suffer from compression? -- and/or should I go the safest route and save as a DNG? (as .tiff is not an option)

    davescm
    Community Expert
    davescmCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    August 20, 2019

    Hi

    It sounds like you have lost access to the raw data and only now have the RGB conversions.

    The DNG convertor only works with RAW files so you cannot directly convert or save a PSD to a DNG file. You could save a flattened TIFF then open it in Camera RAW in bridge then save as a DNG file but there is little advantage to this

    JPEG is not a good format for storing duplicate master files - jpeg compression is lossy. PNG is lossless but will not compress the files (neither jpeg or PNG support layers of course)

    Personally, given that none of these give you access to the original RAW data, I would be looking for a different back up solution that allows you to back up the PSDs intact complete with layers

    Dave

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