If you are a professional photographer, RAW files such as CR2, NEF etc. are probably your favorite thing. No doubt these files give you creative freedom but it comes with a cost. They are extremely large files that cost you large storage and hence a lot more money.
JPEG’s on the other hand is the best w.r.t storage needs but you definitely do not want the quality it offers.
Enter lossy DNG files; they are like a dream come true for photographers. It offers a compression capacity as that of a JPEG and quality almost like a RAW image (lossless DNG). The final file occupies only 1/3 the size of the original file, thus saving you 67% of the disk space.
Refer to this article to know more about Jpeg XS the new Image Compression Standard.
More about lossy DNG compression
The resulting file after compression does not have any artefact’s that a JPEG does. It also saves a good amount of data to allow you to process the images if you wish. So what you get is the benefit of a RAW file which occupies considerably less space.
The drawback is the slight loss in quality like noise in the shadows and patterning (Color cast) in highlights.
If you are worried about the loss in quality, you don’t have to use lossy DNG compression on all files. If you have a large number of pictures that you do not want to delete, but you want to have, this may be a good option for you. This way you can save a ton of storage space.
Now that you know the advantages of lossy DNG compression, let us learn how to convert RAW images using the steps below.
How do you convert RAW images into lossy DNG?
The following steps explain the process of converting existing RAW images to lossy DNG using Lightroom.
With these steps you can convert DNG files and save your valuable disk space. But, while doing this you need to be more careful. If in case ‘Delete originals after conversion’ was enabled, all your original RAW files will get deleted automatically after conversion and you cannot get it back. You will need to resort to specialized data recovery tools. You can use Remo Recover tool to recover lost RAW files after DNG conversion. Hence, make sure this option is not enabled, while during this conversion.
Should You Convert Lossy Images into Lossless Format? Read this article to know the answer.
Refer to this article if you want to know how to resolve the “cannot open DNG files in Photoshop” issue.