MIME Database / Compare Formats / canon-cr3 vs DNG

canon-cr3 vs DNG Format Comparison

canon-cr3

Canon RAW 3

image/x-canon-cr3

Adobe Digital Negative

image/dng

DNG

A complete technical comparison of Canon RAW 3 and Adobe Digital Negative — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature	canon-cr3	DNG
Transparency (Alpha)	✕ No	Yes
Animation Support	✕ No	✕ No
Progressive Loading	✕ No	✕ No
HDR Support	Yes	Yes
EXIF Metadata	Yes	Yes
ICC Color Profile	Yes	Yes

Canon RAW 3

image/x-canon-cr3

Extension

.cr3

Container ISOBMFF (ISO/IEC 14496-12)

Compression Lossless / Lossy (C-RAW)

Algorithm

Canon Proprietary LosslessCanon Proprietary Lossy (C-RAW)

Color Depth 14-bit (Per Channel)

Developed by Canon Inc.

Released 2018

Magic Bytes

00 00 00 18 66 74 79 70 63 72 78 20

Full canon-cr3 reference →

Adobe Digital Negative

image/dng

Extension

.dng

Container TIFF/EP (ISO 12234-2)

Compression Uncompressed / Lossless JPEG / Deflate (ZIP) / Lossy JPEG (Linear DNG)

Algorithm

Lossless JPEG (ITU-T81)Deflate (ZIP)Lossy JPEG (DNG 1.4+)Uncompressed

Color Depth 12-bit, 14-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit (Floating Point HDR)

Developed by Adobe Systems

Released 2004

Magic Bytes

49 49 2A 00 (Little-Endian) / 4D 4D 00 2A (Big-Endian)

Full DNG reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser	canon-cr3	DNG
Chrome	✕	✕
Firefox	✕	✕
Safari	✕	✕
Edge	✕	✕
IE (Legacy)	✕	✕

canon-cr3

canon-cr3 Strengths

Maintains 14-bit uncompressed sensor data, offering massive flexibility for recovering shadows and highlights in post-production
The new C-RAW format offers roughly 40% smaller file sizes than uncompressed raw with virtually indistinguishable quality loss
Utilizes the modern and extensible ISOBMFF container, moving away from archaic TIFF limitations

Limitations

Being a proprietary format, it requires frequent software updates to third-party editing tools (like Lightroom or Capture One) every time a new camera model is released
Completely unsupported in web browsers and standard operating system image viewers without specialized raw codecs
Larger file sizes than in-camera JPEGs, requiring more storage space and processing power

DNG

DNG Strengths

Openly documented specification with royalty-free licensing guarantees long-term archival accessibility, avoiding proprietary manufacturer lock-in
Supports 32-bit floating-point HDR data and linear demosaiced data, making it the industry standard for computational mobile photography (e.g., Apple ProRAW)
Lossless compression algorithms typically produce file sizes 15-20% smaller than uncompressed camera raw files without quality loss
Broad cross-platform ecosystem support across major image processing software like Adobe Lightroom, Capture One, and Affinity Photo

Limitations

Completely unsupported for native rendering in web browsers, requiring conversion to JPEG, WebP, or AVIF for web display
Converting proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, ARW) to DNG takes processing time and can discard proprietary camera maker notes
Raw sensor data requires substantial CPU/GPU overhead for demosaicing, lens corrections, and color profiling during rendering