Placing DNG files for Mockup Design in Indesign

Question

Hi there
I am a magazine designer where i get 400-500 photo selections from my photographer. We have finally upgraded to CS5 (yes yes took our time). I used to be able in CS2 Indesign place the DNG files for mockup of the pages, but now in CS5 it says: "Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation." Is there a filter available to do this or do I need to convert all of the DNG files to jpg to use in the mockups?

Answer 1

The ability to place Camera Raw images directly into InDesign has been a much requested but exceptionally highly-debated feature request since Photoshop started support for Camera Raw. DNG is actually just a special, TIFF-like standardized version of a raw image format that was an attempt to provide a universal container for common features of the various camera vendors' “raw” formats plus plus a common method of storing the vast amount of the individual camera vendors' and model-dependent “secret sauce” used to decode the raw image data for creating more industry-standard TIFF, JPEG, etc. images.
In many respects, a raw image is the digital equivalent of analog photography's concept of a negative, albeit not reversed in tonalilty and/or color. A significant amount of processing is obtain a usable image from raw image data. When shooting in JPEG mode with a digital camera, this processing is done in-camera and includes significant noise reduction, sharpening, color adjustment, and brightness / contrast adjustments depending upon the cameras' capabilities. All that processing is postponed to Photoshop's Camera Raw feature (or the vendors' own host computer-resident conversion software) when you elect to get raw-only images out of your digital cameras. A very large number of professional and amateur photographers who shoot raw mode always process their own images to TIFF or JPEG before submitting for any editorial review or layout. Trying to directly place the DNG file's raw image data, even for mockups, is like trying to do mockups using the negatives in the old days. Exactly what default settings would you use to use these images and how meaningful would the visual representation of those default settings be?
I have been involved with InDesign ever since the first prereleases of InDesign 1.0 (not CS1) and I don't recall any support ever given for direct placement of DNG or any other raw image format. I don't even know of any third party InDesign plug-ins that ever did that! InDesign itself was never not distributed with the libraries and data used for such conversions.
However, there are many cameras that have a mode by which both a raw image and a camera-created JPEG file are output to the camera's memory card. Perhaps you had some directories of images that had these dual image files. (Also, there are indeed only a handful of very specialized programs that produce DNG files directly. Most professional camera manufacturers have elected to continue to output proprietary “secret sauce” image formats. To get DNG files from such file formats, you need to either run a batch process to convert to DNG or perhaps Adobe's own DNG converter that can convert entire directories of raw image files to DNG.)
          - Dov