Adobe DNG, Ricoh GR Digital and Mac OS X

I have been searching around to try and understand the limitations with
Adobe DNG and OS X. It's a bit of a struggle so I'd welcome any
pointers.

I was trying out a potential first digital camera (Ricoh GR Digital)
and found that my trial photos created as RAW were not recognised in
Preview, iPhoto or Aperture. Interestingly File Juicer was able to
extract a 10MB tiff file from within the DNG file. Lightroom will
handle these files but I much prefer Aperture.

Is there a real limit with regard to OS X capabilities to handle DNG raw files?

The only thing I found with my searches is that John Gruber (of Daring
Fireball) uses a GR Digital but of course may only use jpegs.
--
Cheers,

Steve

The reply-to email address is a spam trap.
Email steve 'at' shodgson 'dot' org 'dot' uk

Two things:
I never understood why someone would buy one of those Ricohs. To each his
own.
It isn't OSX per se.
Why would an Apple software product, Aperture, support the proprietary
format (DNG) of a competitor, Adobe?
Ditch Aperture and get a real program, like Photoshop.
While you're at it, ditch the Ricoh and get a real camera.

On Aug 12, 1:26 am, "babaloo" wrote:
snip
It isn't OSX per se.
Why would an Apple software product, Aperture, support the proprietary
format (DNG) of a competitor, Adobe?
snip

DNG is proposed as a standard for RAW files and therefore it would
make sense to implement it especially since some cameras already save
their RAW data in DNG format instead of some camera specific format.
However, Apple is not alone, Microsoft cannot handle DNG files also
(at least on XP, maybe they picked it up on Vista) while they have
added support for displaying Nikon and Canon RAW formats from the file
browser.

On 2007-08-12 01:26:02 +0100, "babaloo" said:

Two things:
I never understood why someone would buy one of those Ricohs. To each his
own.
It isn't OSX per se.
Why would an Apple software product, Aperture, support the proprietary
format (DNG) of a competitor, Adobe?
Ditch Aperture and get a real program, like Photoshop.
While you're at it, ditch the Ricoh and get a real camera.

Okay, so it is possible but it does need a hack.

The Raw.plist file at
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Raw.plist
needs to be edited to add a new entry with key keyRICOH-GR
Digital/key.

After that DNG files can be imported and do have appreciably better
quality than the high quality JPEG.

I actually tried Lightroom again while trying to read these files and I
*really* don't like it. All through the beta program I didn't get it
and I still find 1.1 a mess. Still as you say - each to his own.

I realise the Ricoh isn't for everyone as it is a very quirky camera
but I like the film-like properties, build quality, size, fixed lens.
As a first foray into digital from film rangefinders when I can't get a
D200 or similar yet it seemed like the ideal choice.
--
Cheers,

Steve

The reply-to email address is a spam trap.
Email steve 'at' shodgson 'dot' org 'dot' uk