Need help getting .dng files from VueScan into Aperture 2

Aussie

Ever have one of those moments when you though, "I should've tested this first . . . "

I have scanned about 130 35mm slides using VueScan Software controlling a Nikon Coolscan V as .dng files and want to import them into Aperture 2.

Straight off the bat . . . no luck, however in Lightroom 2 they work just great.

Some quick research pointed me to Adobe DNG Converter which I tried.

Now the images are seen and imported into the "Browser" by Aperture but cannot be seen in the "Viewer". All that appears is a brown frame with the message "Unsupported Image Format".

So the image is 1/2 way in. This is very frustrating as I like Aperture and do not want to have to shell out another $299 to purchase Lightroom.

Has anyone here encountered this problem? Is there another program that can convert my files from .dng to a comparable format that is acceptable to Aperture 2.

Any help sincerely appreciated.

Thanks

ziggy53

Does this help?:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061025124051903

Aussie

ziggy53 wrote:

Does this help?:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061025124051903

Not really ziggy53. I don't have a file called Raw.plist on my Mac. I tried navigating to that file using those exact instructions and could not find it. I even tried a spotlight search and it turned up nothing.

Am I missing this file? I use a Pentax K10D and have no trouble with it's RAW files into Aperture, it's just these VueScan files that I need to get in but can't.

pathfinder

VueScan can re-open the dng files I believe; could you then save them as tiffs for Aperture?

Aussie

pathfinder wrote:

VueScan can re-open the dng files I believe; could you then save them as tiffs for Aperture?

Thanks pathfinder, I realize that TIFF's will work but they won't preserve and allow me to modify the images as I would like. I want to keep them in the DNG format if at all possible.

How can something import into Lightroom so easily and yet not even work in Aperture? Makes no sense.

BinaryFx

I can't help with the OP.

It appears that many applications can only process a DNG version of a raw camera file only *if* it can understand the camera model that the DNG was made from. Does that make sense?

If your software does not support camera X, then it may still have problems even if this file is DNG. You can't use the CS3 DNG converter to make a DNG of a file that is unsupported in say CS, then open up the DNG in CS.

So, although great in concept, the implementation sometimes falls short for some users (it appears to force upgrades and DNG does not always appear solve camera compatibility issues).

Things likely become harder when the original that the DNG was made from is *not* raw camera data and is a scan or other gamma encoded non linear data.


Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

CatOne

The Vuescan RAW format is not a true "RAW" format. You will not get the benefits of RAW (ability to change color space, etc.) using Vuescan's RAW format over TIFF.

You should scan the files as TIFFs from Vuescan.

colourbox

I'm not an Aperture user, but from watching their Apple forum, it seems as Aperture has always had a more restrictive view of what DNG is. I don't even think Aperture accepted general DNGs until Aperture 2, only the DNGs that it already had raw converters for. Looks like Aperture still has some restrictions in there!

I am a VueScan user, though, and I don't know why a DNG scan would be preferable to TIFF. No matter how you save it, you'll never get it to work like a raw camera file, because the scene has already been converted to 3 channels as soon as it hit the film, and all the scanner can do is keep the 3 pre-split channels. There is no "raw data" to be had.

Lightroom can edit TIFF files nondestructively, so that's how I scan film into Lightroom. While you don't get "raw" data, at least all the edits from then on are not altering the original. I thought that's how Aperture treats TIFF as well, so unless I am wrong about that there shouldn't be a need to put DNG scans into Aperture.

Aussie

VueScan DNG's
I have tried scanning TIFF and DNG using VueScan and imported both into Lightroom 2. The DNG files offer far more control of the image.

These are scans of 35mm family slides from the 50's and 60's and the emulsion appears to be cracking on quite a few of them, so I am concerned about getting as much image as I can using 24 bit 4k scans as the images will be lost as some point eventually. Each file is about 70MB. I have to say that they look awesome, I am quite impressed with that Nikon scanner.