This weekend I decided to try my hand at creating a simple plugin that would allow me to export images as DNG files. My idea was simple enough - create an Aperture plugin that mimics the Adobe DNG Converter.
So, I spent a good portion of the day looking online for information on DNG. I downloaded the DNG SDK from Adobe and spent a great deal of time just trying to make heads or tails of it. In the meantime, I designed an interface that looks essentially the same as the Adobe DNG Converter’s preferences panel. This gives the user a few options on export.
Eventually I found out that the DNG SDK cannot write a DNG from an arbitrary RAW file format. In fact all it really can do is read a valid DNG file, and write one (isn’t that the same as making a copy?).
But then I realized all I really needed to do was to call the Adobe DNG Converter command line tool which is hidden inside the application’s package contents.
This isn’t ideal as the user will now see the little Adobe icon popping up over and over again in the dock, and the user must first install the DNG Converter before using my plugin, but it works.
So that I could say I finished an Aperture plugin in one day, I am calling this one a BETA release. Hopefully in the future I will be able to expand on it, adding more sophisticated options and freeing myself from the constraints of the command line tool.
So, if you would like to try it out, please download and install the plugin by following this link. You will also need the Adobe DNG Converter application, which is available for free from Adobe’s website.
A couple of release notes here. I haven’t implemented the progress bar, so don’t be alarmed. Maybe I will get that done on the plane tomorrow. Also, the plugin first exports the Master RAW file to your disk, does the conversion and then deletes the RAW copy. So if you watch in your Finder window you will see the files appearing and disappearing. And lastly if you try to export an image whose Master is not a RAW file (Jpeg or Tiff) it will still export the file, but it will skip the conversion to DNG and just leave it on your destination folder.
This pluign is meant to be essentially a macro. It doesn’t do anything you can;t already do with the Adobe DNG Converter application, but maybe someday it will!
Enjoy…
PS - I have only tested this on Leopard.
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