Can stacked RAW exposures be exported as DNG or another RAW format?
Asked 1/17/2019
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I have several iPhone .DNG files and want to stack them, ideally while keeping the result in a RAW-like format instead of exporting only to JPEG. I can read and stack them in Python with rawpy, but rawpy does not write RAW files. Is it possible to stack RAW/DNG files and export the result as DNG or another RAW format? Does DeepSkyStacker do this, and can Lightroom export a stacked or merged result as DNG?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
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DNG is not a format to export pictures, it is a somewhat universal format for sensor data. There would be no point in re-mosaicing the result of your stacked pictures.
If you want to export your picture in a lossless and high precision format, there are at least the 16-bit TIFF format and the 16-bit PNG.
Originally by user75947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user75947
7y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Usually, no: once you stack multiple RAW files, the result is no longer the original sensor mosaic from a single exposure, so it generally isn’t meaningful to export it as a conventional camera RAW. The normal output from stacking is a high-bit-depth raster image such as 16-bit TIFF or 16-bit PNG.
A standard RAW file contains sensor data before demosaicing. After you demosaic and combine images, you can’t truly turn that back into the original kind of RAW data from a camera.
There is one important exception: Adobe Lightroom can merge multiple exposures to an HDR DNG. That output is typically a Linear DNG, which is a DNG container holding demosaiced image data rather than original mosaiced sensor RAW. So it is “DNG,” but not the same thing as untouched camera RAW.
So the practical choices are:
- stack and save as 16-bit TIFF/PNG for quality-preserving editing
- use Lightroom HDR Merge if a Linear DNG output fits your workflow
Programmatically, writing a true camera-style RAW from stacked images is generally not the right goal; writing a high-precision raster is.
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