Submitted by Robert (not verified) on Tue, 2008-08-19 15:06.
A RAW-like file format needs to be able to deal with different complex and bizarre pixel formats. Most camera sensors only record one channel per pixel. This is why TIFF is used as the base for these formats - it has an insanely flexible way of representing different pixel formats. PNG and OpenEXR both represent bog-standard combined RGB pixels.
Also, PNG does support compressed 16bit. I use it every day.
A RAW-like file format needs
A RAW-like file format needs to be able to deal with different complex and bizarre pixel formats. Most camera sensors only record one channel per pixel. This is why TIFF is used as the base for these formats - it has an insanely flexible way of representing different pixel formats. PNG and OpenEXR both represent bog-standard combined RGB pixels.
Also, PNG does support compressed 16bit. I use it every day.