This is why we need basic certification and licensing for engineering software systems -- the same standards we have for building real-life buildings and structures. This was probably contracted out to the lowest bidder on some freelancing website.
Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
401–410 of 419 posts
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean that RawTherapee and Darktable don't use the same code as each other at all. The instructions (usually sidecar files) the tell each program what to do to generate the output are completely incompatible. > the old code that is deprecated and "hidden" in the newest versions is actually all still there and if you import your stuff in the newest version I'd expect this to be the case with any good photo developer,…
> I mean that RawTherapee and Darktable don't use the same code as each other at all. The instructions (usually sidecar files) the tell each program what to do to generate the output are completely incompatible. I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? > I'd expect this to be…
> I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck?
Well, sorry you feel that way. /s
The difference is that C and Javascript are widely implemented open standards. Lightroom, Darktable and RawTherapee are using three different opaque, undocumented approaches to developing raw images. Neither one has been reimplemented in other software, and it would be extraordinarily difficult to actually do that, because of all the specificity and quirks. You basically need the original software, which means making sure you can still compile it, making sure you have a platform it can run on, and so on. This is more complexity than most people ordinarily expect when they talk about "backing up photos", and that's exactly my point.
> So... it's a non issue? I don't even...
I should probably not even bother responding, since you already showed with your original comment that you didn't bother to even read my post, but I really don't get this. I explained a very specific issue: that there's a lot of complexity to developing raw photos, which means you have to take extra steps to make sure your edits are properly backed up. Open source software has a distinct advantage because you can archive a copy of the software yourself, but it doesn't change the fact that you do need the original software. And in fact you might need the same version, that's what the example of DNG conversion is supposed to illustrate.
This is ... the opposite of a non-issue. In fact it's a very specific issue that I took quite a bit of time to explain in detail. Having to back up your software, or possibly even an entire VM along with your photos to make sure your edits are preserved, goes way beyond what your average person, or even many photographers think they have to do to keep proper backups.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also sounds like someone made the decision not to backup the raw images because they were “big” - that is actually the one thing they should have backed up because all of the smaller files can be regenerated from the raw ones. Ironically my experience has been exactly the opposite. It's the demosaic-ed, fully developed copies of my photos that are larger and harder to preserve than the original RAWs. And these f…
For storing lossless rgb you might consider FLIF given you've demonstrated some flexibility in your setup, https://flif.info it supports 16-bit channels
Thanks for the suggestion! I tested it on one file. Support for the format might turn out to be a problem: to use the flif command line tool, I had to convert my input file from TIFF to PNG first, which means I'd have to be extremely careful not to lose metadata if I started doing this for real. It was also pretty slow.
File sizes (DNG lossless, other formats 16 bits):
* DNG: 18.5 MiB
* TIFF: 84.2 MiB
* FLIF: 55.1 MiB
So while FLIF is unsurprisingly much better than TIFF, it's still ~3 times larger than the DNG, which means that a pretty noticeable amount of additional disk space would have to be sacrificed to store the final edited versions of all my photos.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure this is a great comparison. > People still die in risky surgeries. But we do them despite the risk on the consumer is them being dead. The risk of doing or not doing is death. I'm not sure this is the best analogy.
> The risk of doing or not doing is death Cosmetic surgery...
That's valid, and I dunno why you're being downvoted. I didn't read "elective surgery" from your original comment, but re-reading it, there's nothing in it that discounts it.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sold. In the cases where you lose the raw vs a post processed image, one of those is significantly more lost information. It may be non trivial to reproduce a post process image from a raw image, but the other way around is usually impossible. In one case you've lost original sensor information, in the other case you've lost some parameters and possibly the algorithm used. The former is infinitely more diffic…
I think that's a really shallow way to look at it. For a professional photographer it's the final version of the file that is actually sold, not the RAW or film negative. These final files are often not some 300x200 web preview. These are full sized images. You can argue the final edit has more value and is the one to preserve. Ansel Adams broke the process down into 3 parts with the initial capture being but the fir…
> For a pro, the edits represent thousands of hours of work. That the work can be redone theoretically might mean very little to a working photographer.
This is exactly the issue I had in mind, well said.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean that RawTherapee and Darktable don't use the same code as each other at all. The instructions (usually sidecar files) the tell each program what to do to generate the output are completely incompatible. I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? > I'd expect this to be…
> I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? Well, sorry you feel that way. /s The difference is that C and Javascript are widely implemented open standards. Lightroom, Darktable and RawTherapee are using three different opaque, undocumented approaches to developing raw images.…
> Neither one has been reimplemented in other software, and it would be extraordinarily difficult to actually do that, because of all the specificity and quirks.
Why is this a problem? That's like saying "I need a good GPU to run this game, this sucks!" Well, no shit I guess?
And it's not even close to that because you can always just buy/compile/compile the right version. And for darktable you don't even need that, backward compatibility is guaranteed. Also darktable has a rudimentary Lightroom to darktable conversion tool (never used it).
> This is more complexity than most people ordinarily expect when they talk about "backing up photos", and that's exactly my point.
Not sure about the other ones, but for darktable, it's as simple as keeping the XML alive.
> I explained a very specific issue: that there's a lot of complexity to developing raw photos, which means you have to take extra steps to make sure your edits are properly backed up. Open source software has a distinct advantage because you can archive a copy of the software yourself, but it doesn't change the fact that you do need the original software. And in fact you might need the same version, that's what the example of DNG conversion is supposed to illustrate.
If you don't like having a non-destructive copy, save a high quality JPEG with your edits. Also, I can't think of any other applications (not just photo editing) that you can easily have future-proof non destructive copies of whatever you need to save.
For example: for audio, you can always just save a WAV or FLAC of your work, but you're still relying on the fact that your DAW workflow is still gonna exist 10 years in the future if you try to save your project as opposed to a mastered copy.
Code is also similar. You can save a binary which will probably work, but if you want to save your repo, unless it has good package managers you might have issues later down the line, like that left-pad incident a while back.
Hell, even for something completely different: language drifts over time, and reading Shakespeare is kind of hard unless you know how to read Middle English. And we don't seem to have a problem with forward compatibility, it's just a bit of a pain in the ass. I read it in High School and I didn't go insane.
This isn't a photography issue, this isn't a software issue, this is a core part of human experience.
> This is ... the opposite of a non-issue. In fact it's a very specific issue that I took quite a bit of time to explain in detail. Having to back up your software, or possibly even an entire VM along with your photos to make sure your edits are preserved, goes way beyond what your average person, or even many photographers think they have to do to keep proper backups.
You don't need a VM, at least for darktable. You're making an issue that hasn't appeared but is potentially possible into a real issue for yourself. Maybe it will become an issue, but just figuring out how to install the old version is gonna be good enough. You do you mane. I'll stick with running dt natively and trusting the forward compatibility and OpenCL acceleration.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean that RawTherapee and Darktable don't use the same code as each other at all. The instructions (usually sidecar files) the tell each program what to do to generate the output are completely incompatible. I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? > I'd expect this to be…
> I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? Well, sorry you feel that way. /s The difference is that C and Javascript are widely implemented open standards. Lightroom, Darktable and RawTherapee are using three different opaque, undocumented approaches to developing raw images.…
Actually this highlights a different issue--for photo editing, there isn't one "right" way to do things, like for instance text editing in like Microsoft Word or some shit. darktable has a very different approach compared to Lightroom for instance.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also sounds like someone made the decision not to backup the raw images because they were “big” - that is actually the one thing they should have backed up because all of the smaller files can be regenerated from the raw ones. Ironically my experience has been exactly the opposite. It's the demosaic-ed, fully developed copies of my photos that are larger and harder to preserve than the original RAWs. And these f…
For storing lossless rgb you might consider FLIF given you've demonstrated some flexibility in your setup, https://flif.info it supports 16-bit channels
This is lossless as in it losslessly preserves an frame buffer, but it isn't lossless in that it can be edited in RAW losslessly.
Re: Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean that RawTherapee and Darktable don't use the same code as each other at all. The instructions (usually sidecar files) the tell each program what to do to generate the output are completely incompatible. I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? > I'd expect this to be…
> I'll be honest, this is probably the most ridiculous argument against anything I've ever heard on hacker news. This is like saying C/gcc sucks because Javascript exists. What the fuck? Well, sorry you feel that way. /s The difference is that C and Javascript are widely implemented open standards. Lightroom, Darktable and RawTherapee are using three different opaque, undocumented approaches to developing raw images.…
To add to this, I have a love/hate relationship with Adobe updating their RAW Engine version, as opening up old RAW images (with edits stored in XMP sidecar format) will look completely different due to the engine interpreting edits differently, or in extreme cases, when Adobe decides to add or remove features, which has happened to me numerous times during the last ~15 years since going from RawShooter directly to Lightroom. I usually delete exports for non-critical projects to save space, but any paid jobs are backed up multiple times because I've been bitten before by not being able to render the exact same TIFF for print as 5+ years ago.