DNG (Digital Negative)
Definition
Adobe's open-standard RAW format providing a vendor-neutral archival container for camera sensor data; accepted as an archival format by SWGDE and several major forensic institutes.
- Full name
- Digital Negative
- Developer
- Adobe
- Type
- Open-standard RAW archival format
- Accepted by
- SWGDE and several major forensic institutes
Common questions
Why does an open format like DNG matter for long-term evidence preservation?+
Proprietary camera RAW formats can become unreadable if a manufacturer drops support, while DNG's published specification lets forensic labs and software vendors maintain compatibility indefinitely, which is why it is favoured for archival storage of image evidence.
Does converting a camera's proprietary RAW file to DNG lose any original data?+
A properly performed conversion embeds the original sensor data and metadata, and many workflows retain the original proprietary file alongside the DNG, so the conversion itself need not discard evidentiary information, though the conversion process should be documented.
Related terms
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- SWGDE
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