Mavic Air Raw Photos - Reading DNG Files on Mac

[Fmoots]

Just wondering if anyone is having any problems reading .dng files taken on the Mavic Air on their Mac (in preview or photos app). I've been doing some googling and it seems this appeared to be an issue on the Mavic Pro for alot of people after a firmware update. I'm not planning to actually develop them in the photos app, however I can't even preview the images.

Can anyone confirm if they can preview their .dng files on a mac? I'm running High Sierra on a late 2016 Macbook Pro.

Thanks!

 

[wowography]

DNG is an adobe standard. It’s not recognized by default in Win10 or Mac. You can open it in Lightroom, Photoshop or search for a DNG viewer which when installed will also preview and open dozens of other formats.

 

[Fmoots]

DNG is an adobe standard. It’s not recognized by default in Win10 or Mac. You can open it in Lightroom, Photoshop or search for a DNG viewer which when installed will also read dozens of other formats.

Thanks for the reply.

I thought this might be the case, however I came across several threads on the DJI forums where people were confirming they could open DNG files on a mac prior to a firmware upgrade. The OP even ended up sending his Mavic back to DJI, who replaced it. After the replacement the .DNG's were readable.

He uploaded a sample .dng to dropbox and the consensus was some of the metadata was missing (gps co-ordinates etc) which may have occured when the drone writes date to the card, and so this might have lead to it being unreadable?

See thread here

Mavic RAW files on Apple Mac

 

[ckizer]

DNG work fine on mac. Just hit the spacebar to preview it. You shouldn't even need an app. Or drag it into the preview app. Maybe a recent software update or something is causing them issues?

 

[Fmoots]

DNG work fine on mac. Just hit the spacebar to preview it. You shouldn't even need an app. Or drag it into the preview app. Maybe a recent software update or something is causing them issues?

Interesting, some people seem to beable to read them & some can’t. I can preview them with spacebar or anything. The only way I have managed to view them is by downloading adobe dng converter & coverting the files, however the cuts the file size form 24mb to 17..so i’m assuming some of the data is compressed/lost.

I’d be interested to know if anyone who has received their Mavic Air in the last view days can read .DNG files copied directly from the micro SD in High Sierra?

 

[ckizer]

Interesting, some people seem to beable to read them & some can’t. I can preview them with spacebar or anything. The only way I have managed to view them is by downloading adobe dng converter & coverting the files, however the cuts the file size form 24mb to 17..so i’m assuming some of the data is compressed/lost.

I’d be interested to know if anyone who has received their Mavic Air in the last view days can read .DNG files copied directly from the micro SD in High Sierra?

Do you have the Adobe Creative Suite? Maybe they added some new DNG metadata extension that's non-standard. I'm not having issues, if you post one of your DNG files, I'll see if it opens on my mac with Adobe Creative suite and the one without it.

 

[Cut.Aussie]

DNG should open fine on a Mac, there was a brief period where DJI made a file format change on the Mavic Pro where they stopped working but they work again now.

 

[Fmoots]

Do you have the Adobe Creative Suite? Maybe they added some new DNG metadata extension that's non-standard. I'm not having issues, if you post one of your DNG files, I'll see if it opens on my mac with Adobe Creative suite and the one without it.

No I don't have adobe creative suite. I often airdrop raw files from my Rx100 to my iphone to edit on the the fly with Snapseed. (Although these are not .dng, but instead .arw, however I believe Snapseed can read both formats) but it will not recognise the file either - which makes me think it's something to do with data missing when the MA writes photos to the card. I've tried with both internal memory and a micro SD

I'll upload one of the files to gdrive later. Thanks for the help.

 

[pgh1949]

Mavic Pro DNG files don't open on my Mac using space bar quick view or Preview but they open fine in Lightroom.

 

[sjcpilot]

I am having this same problem. Mavic Air DNGs are not able to be previewed only when uploaded to Lightroom are they read. When attempting to quick look or preview I just get the spinning loading icon

 

[Fmoots]

Here is one of my DNG files straight from camera on the air:

DJI_0012.DNG

Quite a noisy photo due to the high ISO in low light, but anyway.

Would be interested to know if anyone can open the file in preview or photos on a mac running high sierra. It does sound like it's just how the files are written to the card if others are having the same issue. I was just worried it was my particular model, after reading about the post above where the OP had his mavic exchanged by DJI and after they appeared to be perfectly readable. Just seems strange. I'd imagine the files will open fine in Lightroom/Photoshop. They work fine when i convert them with adobe DNG converter, but it's just an extra step.

 

[bluskies99]

Here is one of my DNG files straight from camera on the air:

DJI_0012.DNG

Quite a noisy photo due to the high ISO in low light, but anyway.

Would be interested to know if anyone can open the file in preview or photos on a mac running high sierra. It does sound like it's just how the files are written to the card if others are having the same issue. I was just worried it was my particular model, after reading about the post above where the OP had his mavic exchanged by DJI and after they appeared to be perfectly readable. Just seems strange. I'd imagine the files will open fine in Lightroom/Photoshop. They work fine when i convert them with adobe DNG converter, but it's just an extra step.

I downloaded your photo and can confirm it doesn't open in preview or finder on my iMac 5K 2015 running Sierra 10.12.6. I see the same behavior with several test shots taken with my Air. They all (yours included) import fine into Lightroom and seem to work correctly there. They also open fine in Photoshop (both the desktop CC versions). I have seen issues in the past with Apple not updating their software to read some of the latest proprietary Raw files (.CR2 and .PEF in my case), but they end up adding support eventually. With these files being .DNG's you would expect they should open fine. I tried looking at the same files on my same computer running Windows 10 in Parallels and they show up fine in file explorer as thumbnails there. Must be some slight inconsistency with the way DJI is writing the .DNG files.
I also downloaded Adobe's DNG converter and Converted the DJI DNG's. In Finder the small icon is correctly displayed, but the photo itself it a black rectangle and the same if you open it with the space bar.
Looks like if you are using Photos to edit your Air DNG's you'll have to wait until DJI fixes this with a firmware update.

 

[Cut.Aussie]

Here is one of my DNG files straight from camera on the air:

DJI_0012.DNG

Quite a noisy photo due to the high ISO in low light, but anyway.

Would be interested to know if anyone can open the file in preview or photos on a mac running high sierra. It does sound like it's just how the files are written to the card if others are having the same issue. I was just worried it was my particular model, after reading about the post above where the OP had his mavic exchanged by DJI and after they appeared to be perfectly readable. Just seems strange. I'd imagine the files will open fine in Lightroom/Photoshop. They work fine when i convert them with adobe DNG converter, but it's just an extra step.

Opens fine on my 27” 5k iMac in Preview and also interestingly on my iPad Pro too which I’d never tried before. Mac software is fully up to date

 

[Fmoots]

I downloaded your photo and can confirm it doesn't open in preview or finder on my iMac 5K 2015 running Sierra 10.12.6. I see the same behavior with several test shots taken with my Air. They all (yours included) import fine into Lightroom and seem to work correctly there. They also open fine in Photoshop (both the desktop CC versions). I have seen issues in the past with Apple not updating their software to read some of the latest proprietary Raw files (.CR2 and .PEF in my case), but they end up adding support eventually. With these files being .DNG's you would expect they should open fine. I tried looking at the same files on my same computer running Windows 10 in Parallels and they show up fine in file explorer as thumbnails there. Must be some slight inconsistency with the way DJI is writing the .DNG files.
I also downloaded Adobe's DNG converter and Converted the DJI DNG's. In Finder the small icon is correctly displayed, but the photo itself it a black rectangle and the same if you open it with the space bar.
Looks like if you are using Photos to edit your Air DNG's you'll have to wait until DJI fixes this with a firmware update.

Thanks for checking that out. Good to know it's not a singular problem with my drone. I'm hoping Apple/DJI will fix it with os/firmware updates somewhere down the line. It's not a huge issue since the files work perfectly with most other raw editing software once converting using adobe dng conveter.

Opens fine on my 27” 5k iMac in Preview and also interestingly on my iPad Pro too which I’d never tried before. Mac software is fully up to date

Hmm Interesting. Just to clarify, if you go to the grive link (the image should load fine within your browser, hosted on gdrive), but then download the image to your mac downloads folder, you can then open it using preview? Are you on High Sierra?

 

[Cut.Aussie]

Thanks for checking that out. Good to know it's not a singular problem with my drone. I'm hoping Apple/DJI will fix it with os/firmware updates somewhere down the line. It's not a huge issue since the files work perfectly with most other raw editing software once converting using adobe dng conveter.




Hmm Interesting. Just to clarify, if you go to the grive link (the image should load fine within your browser, hosted on gdrive), but then download the image to your mac downloads folder, you can then open it using preview? Are you on High Sierra?

Is your Mavic firmware fully up to date?

Here is one of my dng files taken a couple of weeks ago with my Mavic Pro, let me know if you want one from a Mavic Air?

https://app.box.com/s/h7oeox7dg8djp4frhwx690ymkdu9z78m

See if that loads on your Mac

 

[bluskies99]

Is your Mavic firmware fully up to date?

Here is one of my dng files taken a couple of weeks ago with my Mavic Pro, let me know if you want one from a Mavic Air?

https://app.box.com/s/h7oeox7dg8djp4frhwx690ymkdu9z78m

See if that loads on your Mac

Your Mavic Pro file displays properly in Finder on my Mac Mini running High Sierra (10.13.3), but only displays the small icon on the iMac 5K Sierra (10.12.6) with the larger previews a black rectangle. My Mavic Air DNG's and the one I downloaded above from FMoots don't work in either OS. (no small picture icon - not even the black rectangle for larger - just the spinning wheel).

Addendum: Just to see if there is a more generalized issue with DNG's on the Mac I've looked at a number of DNG files I have from other platforms. I do have several taken 10 years ago on a Nikon that i rented for a dive that display the same issues as the Mavic Air DNG's. Files from Yuneec and Pentax seem ok. For me it's not going to be a problem as I edit all in Lightroom anyway and they all work fine there.

 

[Cut.Aussie]

Your Mavic Pro file displays properly in Finder on my Mac Mini running High Sierra (10.13.3), but only displays the small icon on the iMac 5K Sierra (10.12.6) with the larger previews a black rectangle. My Mavic Air DNG's and the one I downloaded above from FMoots don't work in either OS. (no small picture icon - not even the black rectangle for larger - just the spinning wheel).

Addendum: Just to see if there is a more generalized issue with DNG's on the Mac I've looked at a number of DNG files I have from other platforms. I do have several taken 10 years ago on a Nikon that i rented for a dive that display the same issues as the magic Air DNG's. Files from Yuneec and Pentax seem ok. For me it's not going to be a problem as I edit all in Lightroom anyway and they all work fine there.

Is there some reason your iMac os is so out of date?

 

[bluskies99]

Is there some reason your iMac os is so out of date?

It's not that out of date. It has the latest software short of going to High Sierra, which I'm holding off on until they get more bugs ironed out. Can't afford to lose productivity with my photos and I don't want my SSD drives converting to AFS yet. Apple seems to have a need to put out a new OS every year whether it's ready for serious use or not. That's why I've upgraded only my mini, that I use only as a file server. No SSD's on it and no serious production software.

 

[madronna]

Just wondering if anyone is having any problems reading .dng files taken on the Mavic Air on their Mac (in preview or photos app). I've been doing some googling and it seems this appeared to be an issue on the Mavic Pro for alot of people after a firmware update. I'm not planning to actually develop them in the photos app, however I can't even preview the images.

Can anyone confirm if they can preview their .dng files on a mac? I'm running High Sierra on a late 2016 Macbook Pro.

Thanks!

Thought I'd share my experiences. I too am experiencing this issue. When I bought my Air, I flew it without updating the firmware and saved a few videos and image (DNG) to the internal memory. After the maiden voyage, I updated the firmware, and chose SD as primary storage. After coming back from the trip and connecting the drone to my Mac, I can see that the photos took on the first flight are available to see in Finder and Preview however all other DNG files are not; I simply see the default Finder Icon, file size but does not render the image. I tried importing the photo into Aurora HDR and it says it cannot recognise that file format (though others are fine).

I too have read the various forums which I will include below and these are the steps I have tried:

1) Switching memory location from SD to Internal - no difference
2) Downgrading Firmware on Air to XXXX.100 and taking new photos - no difference

My inital thoughts were firmware but downgrading seems to have not made a difference. This doesnt seem to be a Mac issue either given the fact that the RAW files from the first flight render fine. Again reading other forums, High Sierra has the widest range of compatibility with RAW devices so there shouldnt be an issue.

On one of the forums the person with the issue sent the unit (Mavic Pro) to be replaced and has not seen any issues. I want to hold off returning the Air as it seems it did originally take the photos without any issues. I am watching the threads and will contact DJI though don't see them being helpful for other people

Mac verion: Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.3

Other forums:

Mavic RAW files on Apple Mac
MacOS Sierra 10.12.5 vs. DNG? [WORKAROUND]

 

[LuvMyTJ]

You are correct. I have the Air & app updated to the latest and my MacBook Pro is running High Sierra 10.13.3.
Preview will not open the DNG file but Photoshop Camera Raw 10.0.0.827 opens it with no problems.