Adobe Bridge DNG Converter not available
I’ve been reading a Scott Kelby book on Adobe CS3 for Digital Photographers recently and have just made my way through the section on acquiring photos from a digital camera or, as the experts tell you to do, from a card reader. I had noticed that Adobe Bridge’s Photo Downloader seemed to be missing a setting on my installation of CS3 so I set about trying to find out why it was missing.
Unfortunately for me, even after I had done the changes below, the checkbox for Convert To DNG was greyed out and when moused over it would say DNG Converter missing or corrupt and no amount of fiddling fixed it. I did manage to get it working (as you can see) but it required a full deactivation, ununistall, clean up using Adobe’s CS3 Clean Script, reboot and re-install to get it working, so be prepared for that possibility!
After much searching regarding the lack of my Convert To DNG option, I ended up on Adobe Forums on a thread that started out as another issue but ended with a chap offering advice on how to get it working. My thanks to him for pointing me in the right direction.
This is what I was seeing when I opened Photo Downloader:
Adobe Bridge Photo Downloader - with DNG
The advice in the Adobe Forum post was to change Adobe Bridge’s language setting to English in Preferences > Advanced. When I opened the preferences dialogue box I saw that the language setting was blank!
Adobe Bridge - Language Blank
As recommended, this was changed to English.
Adobe Bridge - Language Set
Now restart Adobe Bridge and fire up Photo Downloader again and we should have our DNG option!
Adobe Bridge Photo Downloader - with DNG
As I mentioned, for me, the Convert To DNG option even at this point was totally greyed out and mouse over gave DNG Converter missing or corrupt. I attempted to install the standalone DNG Converter from Adobe’s website but that didn’t resolve the issue for me either. The only fix was a total removal of CS3 and to start again from scratch. Yes I could have just used the standalone DNG Converter but that adds another step in the process and means I also have to manually delete or archive the CR2 and XMP files. Call me lazy but I wanted a one step process to get my files to DNG!
I hope this helps if you’re struggling with the Convert To DNG option! Any questions, give me a shout.
Lewis
