Adobe released a free Software Developer's Kit (SDK) for the Digital Negative Specification (DNG) this week in an effort to encourage further adoption of the DNG raw image format. The SDK gives camera manufacturers and software developers tools and information they need to incorporate DNG support into their products. You can download the SDK for Mac or Windows from the Adobe site.

DNG is an open standard raw format that Adobe introduced to avoid the uncertainty associated with camera and software manufacturers' proprietary raw formats. What does that mean? Let's say your camera produces raw files in a format that only the camera manufacturer's raw converter software can open. If the manufacturer stops making that software in the future, you could find yourself with lots of unusable files.

Adobe moved toward a solution to this problem by introducing the DNG format in 2004, and making it freely available to camera and software manufacturers. DNG files can be opened by the Adobe Camera Raw converter in Photoshop and by third-party software that incorporates DNG format. As the DNG format becomes more universally adopted by camera and software manufacturers, your raw photographs get a longer expected life. Adobe's new DNG SDK is one more step in that direction.