Image library archive format

Yes - sorry. I forgot and then I was busy.

The total number of votes is a bit of a disappointment but the proportions were pretty much as I expected with Pentax's own pef format dominating.

The concern that prompted my question is that pef format is proprietary to Pentax. As far as I know, the format isn't published so support by software publishers other than Pentax depends on reverse engineering efforts.

We have to rely on Pentax, one or two other companies with a commercial interest or enthusiasts to maintain software to decode the file format.

Right now, that doesn't seem like a problem. The format is popular, fresh and there seems to be a useful level of support.

But where will we stand in ten years. The format could be dropped by Pentax in five years in favour of new formats with support for new features.

Five years after that, it could be seen as an irrelevance to many who we currently depend on. A paragraph in some release notes would read: "Support has been dropped for some obsolete RAW file formats: pef, mrw, x3f"

In years to come, we could find ourselves hunting around trying to find someone with a working one of those old Intel PCs or Macs that can still run a converter that we have on a CD that looks a bit flakey.

All very true, except that Silkypix presumably DOES have full access to the format. However, there wil be no onus on them to continue to provide support in the long term.

Personally, I plan to comvert everything to either DNG or TIFF in about three years time. By that stage we will be dealing with much bigger and faster hard disks, so it will cost less to purchase the necessary storage space and take less time to do the work.

Alternatively, remote on-line storage may be the most practicable storage solution by then.

G

Sorry to get off subject a bit. I have been using Silkypix for about a month now and find it a very good and easy to use program but i also find it very slow. I have a gig of ram so i would think that sufficent. Does anyone else have the same problem. I put it down too the large pef files is it working with :

I have 4G RAM on a 2.6GHz dual processor machine and it is very slow with many operations. But I also believe it is doing more than most other products and gives superior results. Although I don't know if the results are worth the extent of speed difference. But I do believe they should be able to optimize some more speed out of the product.

I think you are right that it does more processing than other products. If you find that a problem, the Help file has some suggestions for speeding things up.

I find that Silkypix works very efficiently if you batch process a number of images at once. You can set things like white balance, exposure compensation, curves in one image, then copy them to the others. You can then tweak individually any images that require it (perhaps cropping, for instance).

Then tell it to output the whole batch and go off and do something else.

I find the speed acceptable when using it like this.

G

Yes, and disappointing only one person stayed on topic after you answered this.

As you know that Pentax users are not alone in this area. ALL manufacturers (and models of each camera) have proprietary files. Pentax is one of the few that have included the DNG option so far and that is a good sign they are looking out for us. Well, good if DNG does eventually catch on as the universal RAW format, but who knows if that will indeed happen. Other manufacturers seem to be resisting.


Yes that could all happen but even if they did drop support, your files would not suddenly stop working. Look at the many changes in M.S. WORD files over the past 25 years for example. There have always been many years of opportunity to make your old files compatible when you upgrade. But if the file has been obsolete for 10 years why would ANYBODY want it anyway? You should have upgraded LONG ago man!

Why would you wait that long to convert them? Let's look at reality here. My first computer was a TI 16/4A (in 1983 I think). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99 and things have changed A LOT in those 25 years. Nobody would ever have dreamed what the future would hold, and what a waste of time it would have been worrying about what format I should be saving my word processor files in for the future. As those 25 years went by did I ever have trouble upgrading my files...NEVER. BUT, if I had waited until now to try and convert them... well, you know what I'm going to say.

I think the biggest worry we should all have is what kind of media we are storing our files on. Will the actual data still be sound in 5 or 10 years? Will it even be sound in a couple of years? Are CD's and DVD's really "permanent"? What about external drives? THOSE are real worries to me because I have recently looked at my old colour prints and my old 8mm Kodak ("bringing your memories to life" ) home movies.

What a waste of thousands of dollars, but hey, who knew?