DNG to PNG

PNG is the output to choose when a DNG is going somewhere it will be worked on further: retouching, compositing, a print layout, a machine-learning dataset. Nothing is thrown away after the raw decode, so the picture you download is exactly the picture the decoder produced. The decode itself runs here, in this tab, from the sensor data rather than from the preview the camera tucked inside the file.

Drop DNG images here

DNG files — or any of PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, BMP, ICO, TIFF, GIF or camera raw (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2). Everything runs on this device.

Or paste an image from the clipboard.

Your images never leave this device. They are decoded and re-encoded by your own browser, and the security policy on every page blocks this site from sending them anywhere.

Convert to

Lossless, keeps transparency, universally supported, larger than modern formats.

Quality

PNG is lossless — it stores every pixel exactly, so there is nothing to trade away.

Size

Images keep their original dimensions.

Rotate

Images are turned upright from their own orientation data, and left that way.

Transparency

Kept. PNG stores a full alpha channel, so cut-outs and soft edges come through exactly.

Metadata

Exif is carried across where both formats can hold it. Nothing currently in the queue has any.

Sensor detail

Decodes at the file's full resolution, interpolating missing colours when it has a colour filter array. Files already holding colour pixels need no demosaicing.

White balance

The value your camera recorded when the shutter fired — what you saw on the back of the camera.

Camera, lens, exposure and capture time are written into the PNG when those fields are present. The file details show whether GPS data exists, but coordinates are deliberately not written, and colour comes out as sRGB.

What happens to your image

File size depends mostly on the image itself.

What is preserved and what is lost converting DNG to PNG
Property	Outcome
Transparency	Preserved: DNG images have no transparency to lose.
Image quality	Preserved: Unchanged. Both formats are lossless, so every pixel comes through exactly.
Colour	Partly preserved: LibRaw develops the sensor data into eight-bit sRGB. The output uses that colour space; a source colour profile is not copied into the output.
Exif metadata	Partly preserved: When metadata is switched on, the camera, lens, exposure and capture time recorded in the raw file are assembled into a standard block and written into the PNG. Switch it off to remove them. The GPS position is shown to you in the file details and deliberately never written.
Orientation	Preserved: Applied to the pixels, and the tag is reset to upright afterwards so nothing rotates the image a second time.

What lossless means here, and what it does not

PNG is lossless from the decoder onwards. Every pixel LibRaw produces is stored exactly, with no compression artefacts and no second generation of loss if you save the file again. That is the whole reason to pick PNG over JPEG for a raw file.

It is not lossless relative to the DNG. The raw file holds twelve to sixteen bits per photosite and a single colour per position; the PNG holds a demosaiced picture at eight bits per channel in sRGB. Interpolation, white balance, the colour matrix and the tone curve have all been applied, and those decisions are fixed into the pixels. If you need the extra bits for heavy editing, a raw editor writing sixteen-bit TIFF is the right tool — this build does not write sixteen-bit PNG.

How the DNG is actually decoded

The file is identified from its bytes, opened with LibRaw compiled to WebAssembly, and its sensor data unpacked. The black level is subtracted, the channels are scaled by the white balance the camera recorded — or by one computed from the image, if you switch to automatic — and the colour filter array is interpolated with adaptive homogeneity-directed demosaicing. The DNG's colour matrix then maps sensor primaries to sRGB, and a standard tone curve with automatic brightening is applied.

A linear DNG — the kind some phones, drones and converters write, where the pixels were already demosaiced by someone else — skips the interpolation step because there is nothing left to interpolate. The queue tells you which kind it found before you convert.

The JPEG preview embedded in most DNGs is used only if the sensor data genuinely cannot be decoded, and in that case the row, the result and the ZIP manifest all say the output came from the camera's preview. It is never passed off as a conversion.

Expect large files

A raw file is compressed sensor data with one value per photosite. A PNG of the same photograph has three full channels per pixel, and fine detail and noise compress poorly without loss, so the PNG is often as large as the DNG and frequently larger. How much larger depends on the scene: the eight-megapixel Canon frame the CR2 page is tested with becomes a 19 MB PNG, while a 10.7-megapixel Nikon test file becomes only 4 MB. Expect more pixels and more fine detail to mean a bigger file.

If the files are going to be viewed rather than edited, the DNG to JPG page produces something a tenth of the size that nobody could tell apart on a screen. Half resolution is the other lever: it quarters the pixel count and therefore roughly quarters the PNG.

If something goes wrong

The PNG looks flatter than the image in Lightroom or on the camera.

No picture profile, lens correction or local contrast is applied — only the camera matrix and a standard tone curve. Editors and cameras add their own look on top.

What to do: Expected. A neutral, lossless starting point is what PNG output is for; apply the look in the editor you hand the file to.

There is a colour cast across the whole picture.

The white balance recorded by the camera was wrong for the light, which is common under mixed or artificial lighting.

What to do: Switch white balance to automatic in the raw settings. The file reconverts from the sensor data with a white balance computed from the image itself.

The download is bigger than the DNG.

PNG stores three full eight-bit channels per pixel without discarding anything, while the DNG stores one compressed value per photosite.

What to do: That is the cost of lossless output. Use half resolution, or convert to JPG or WebP if the file does not need further editing.

A DNG from a phone or drone will not decode.

Some DNG writers use compression modes or optional features this LibRaw build does not include.

What to do: The message names what it found. Rewriting the file with Adobe's free DNG Converter, which uses widely supported compression, usually makes it convert here.

Questions

Is the PNG sixteen-bit?

No. The decoder is asked for eight bits per channel because everything after it in this tool, including the resizing, works at eight bits. A sixteen-bit PNG padded from eight-bit data would be larger without holding anything more, so it is not offered.

Does the PNG keep the camera details?

With metadata switched on, the camera, lens, exposure and capture time read from the DNG are written into the PNG as an Exif block. PNG's Exif chunk is a relatively recent addition and some older software ignores it. GPS coordinates are shown in the file details and never written into the output.

Does PNG output include an alpha channel?

There is no transparency in a raw photograph, so every pixel is fully opaque. The PNG is a plain colour image.

Is my DNG uploaded to convert it?

No. The decoder is served from this site and runs in a worker in your browser. There is no upload route, the security policy blocks cross-origin connections, and browser tests check that a raw conversion sends no file anywhere.