rawformat

OpenRAW Survey

For those of you not in the know, OpenRaw is an orginazation dedicated more or less to making RAW an open and transparent file format, to prevent photogrpahers from becoming locked out of old or encrypted RAW formats.

I think this is an excellent idea.

OpenRaw sent out a press release today announcing their 15-minute survey collecting data on RAW file use by photographers in an effort to get some solid data to help their cause.

Full text as follows:

1/31/2006 For Immediate Release 
RAW Survey launched: An International Study of the Experiences, Requirements, Preferences, and Concerns of Photographers regarding RAW Imaging Technology

On January 31, 2006, the OpenRAW initiative launched an internationalsurvey on its Web site ( http://openraw.org/survey/ ) to collect information about the experiences, requirements, preferences, and concerns of digital photographers and other interested parties regarding RAW imaging technology---a concept that many writers are
comparing to a "digital negative".

RAW Technology Issues

As the digital properties of RAW image files have become better understood, many digital photographers have embraced RAW technology as the best means to obtain maximum image quality for themselves and their clients. However, during the past year many photographers, photo archivists, and others involved in digital imaging have become concerned about the absence of a robust, common standard for RAW image
file formats. Faced with a proliferation of proprietary RAW format---often different for each successive camera model from each camera manufacturer---imaging professionals and devoted amateurs have experienced significant disruptions in their digital image workflow and limitations in their choice of software tools.

This expansion of the sheer number of proprietary RAW formats and the adoption by camera manufacturers of the practice of encryption to conceal information stored in RAW image files have increased fears about the viability of RAW formats for the long term archiving of photographic material. Some manufacturers whose cameras produced
proprietary RAW files have already gone out of business, with unknown consequences for future access to those images. Many photographers are concerned that RAW files from current camera models may not be accessible in the future when those models are discontinued.

Why a Survey?

Although these topics are being discussed in many photography forums, we have very little systematic information about the experiences, requirements, preferences, and concerns of photographers regarding RAW imaging technology. One thing is clear---many photographers and archivists believe that camera manufacturers are making important decisions about RAW image technology with little or no input from the people who buy and use their equipment or who are involved in the preservation of photographic works. The OpenRAW survey will give photographers and other interested parties an opportunity to have a voice in the further development of RAW imaging technology.

The online survey questionnaire will be available for eight weeks beginning on January 31, 2006. The date was chosen to coincide closely with the 168th anniversary of an address by William Henry Fox Talbot to the Royal Society of London in 1839 describing a process of "photogenic drawing" (the collotype) based on a paper "negative" that would permit unlimited copies of an image to be made.

We encourage everybody with an interest in RAW image formats to visit the OpenRAW website at http://openraw.org/survey/ and to complete the survey questionnaire, which will take approximately 10-15 minutes. All responses will be kept completely anonymous and confidential. The OpenRAW organization and survey have no connection with any business or commercial interest. The purpose of the survey is to give
professional and amateur photographers a means to express their requirements, preferences, and concerns which will be made available to camera manufacturers, software development firms, and other key participants in the digital imaging industry.

Results of the survey will be reported at the OpenRAW Web page. We believe good decisions by the digital photography industry should take account of the needs, requirements, and preferences of the photographers who make their living or pursue their artistic vision through this medium. We will share the survey results widely in the hope that the future of the craft will benefit.

For more information please visit the OpenRAW web site:
http://www.OpenRAW.org

Plugins

For those of you using Unix machines (and GIMP for image editing), I ran across a plugin that will read any RAW image files supported by dcraw into the program.

It's called RawPhoto GIMP-2.0 Plugin.

More RAW converters and cool gallery tools

Part of what makes RAW files so useful when shooting with digital cameras is that the eventual picture depends so much on the converter program you use.

With cameras that automatically pump out jpeg images, there's no real option for how the image is interpreted, and, as converters get better over time, old RAW files can be re-converted for even better image quality (or so we are told).

Regardless, this means there's no shortage of options for converting RAW images to other image formats. I was pointed recently to RawView, which is a Java applet designed to view and batch convert RAW images from several different cameras into a web-friendly "gallery" setup.

When you think about it, this is a very cool tool. If you're not completely satisfied with plugging images into Flicker, or you'd just like to keep control of all your own images, or for whatever reason you'd like to make your own image gallery, this program is a sweet little one-step program to give you a neat looking gallery setup.

I downloaded the program and used the pictures I took from a while ago to make a little two-image gallery that you can look at here.

Most of the settings I basically left alone, some of them because I couldn't figure out how to use them (like adjusting gamma, contrast, and brightness during the export) and some of them because I was just too lazy (like adding copyright info and image titles).

If you're looking for something to actually do some editing in, or something that plugs into your image-editing workflow, this probably isn't the app you're looking for. But if you like the idea of a reasonably one-step tool for creating an online image-gallery, this things seems cool.

The well known "lesser known" tips

Scott Kelby, the editor for Photoshop User magazine, compiled a list of 10 little known Photoshop CS2 Camera Raw Tips.

He kicks it off with his own blurb:

Sometimes in life, it’s the little things that really matter, and I guess that’s why I really get a kick out of some of the little Photoshop tips that seem to fly under the radar. These are the ones that don’t get lots of press, but can make a big difference in your everyday workflow, and the more time you save during production, the more time you have to be creative (which is infinitely more fun)! So, here’s a list of 10 of my favorite little known tips for using Photoshop CS2’s Camera Raw...

Check out the list, you never know what might have "flown under your radar."

Understanding how RAW is captured

There's a pdf floating around called Understanding Digital Raw Capture, which I think was written by Bruce Fraser for Adobe. It's not particularly high-tech or complicated, and that's probably the beauty of it.

I'm not always the most technical-minded guy on the block, but this article doesn't get too bogged down with details, and does a good job explaining what exactly RAW is and why it's a useful tool for photography. It also describes the basic process of how digital cameras capture their images and record them to digital file formats, which is cool because understanding how your camera actually works is probably just a good thing to know.

You can get the pdf file here.

Camera Raw 3.3 released

Adobe just released version 3.3 of the Camera Raw plugin.

According to the Adobe website, they added support for the RAW formats on 17 different cameras, including the EOS 20Da that my dad has eyeing recently. Cool.

In addition to adding support for the new file formats, the people at isnaini.com noted a few improvements in how it works:

In addition, there is a noticeable improvement in the rendering of fine detail (at least with files from the newer cameras we’ve tested it with, and with the plug-in’s various noise reduction controls set low or off). JPEG, TIFF and PSD files saved directly from the plug-in will also now contain caption metadata in both XMP and IPTC formats, instead of just XMP as before.

Color Profiling in ACR

Eric Chan at MIT has compiled a really cool tutorial on modifying the color profiles built into ACR 3.

It's a fairly long piece that runs you through the process, step by step, and it includes a color-checker file for you to download, print out, and photograph in the process.

Even if you don't plan to actually change settings in ACR, it's worth looking through because he includes several example images where you can note the (sometimes large) difference before and after modifying the color profiles.

See RAW files in Windows?

For those (probably few) of you using Windows machines, Microsoft recently put up a downloadable extension that lets you view several types of RAW files (mostly Canon and Nikon) the way you can view jpeg files in Windows Explorer and Picture Viewer.

Here's some of the info from the download page:

After installing the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer Powertoy for Windows XP you will be able to view, organize, and print photos captured in RAW image formats from supported Canon and Nikon digital cameras.

This software offers the following benefits to digital photographers:

• High image quality. This software uses the camera vendors' own processing libraries to provide the highest possible image fidelity for RAW images.
• Superior color fidelity. Windows Image Color Management (ICM) is used to render images in the correct color space as determined by the photographer when the image was captured.
• Familiar user experience. This software builds on the familiar Windows user experience and requires little or no learning curve.
• Performance tuned for rapid previews. The software uses background processing and other techniques to ensure a good preview experience even for large images.

The RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer consists of two components: a lightweight "shell extension" for Windows XP that provides high quality thumbnails in Windows Explorer, and a RAW Image Viewer application with an interface similar to the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

The fun part

The fun part about blogging here at rawformat is that I'm at exactly the right level for it.

What do I mean? Photography has been, for all intents and purposes, a hobby throught my life that I picked up largely from my father. He's forgotten more about film than I'll ever know. Practically everything I've learned about how to use cameras in general and photoshop (and digital images) in particular has been self-taught.

Two and a half years ago I successfully edited a friend out of a picture (I still feel bad about it, but the picture looked so much better). Since then I've slowly begun to understand how the tools and features of photoshop work together to create good images. Only in the past few months have I started to play with RAW format files.

So blogging about RAW here is an excellent parallel to my own understanding of the format and the tools available for it. That's the fun part.

Side note: if you get Photoshop User, the NAPP magazine, the JAN/FEB issue reviews RawShooter Premium 2006 on page 92. They gave it excellent marks ;)

Further Impressions

A little follow-up on RawShooter Essentials:

I got up and looked at it a little bit more during daylight today, and I actually like it better than I did initially - I'm a geek at heart and there's something in the geek bible that forbids me from reading documentation, so I missed a few things at first, notably the ability to export to either tiff or jpeg.

In the Batch Convert tab there's a button to expand the conversion options, and you can set the format, bit depth (if it's jpeg you can set quality), and a few other things, including the program set to automatically open the output file.

I also like the way the browsing is set up...the file bar on the left is easy to use and the preview window up top makes sense, allowing you to flag, filter, and prioritize images the way you'd like. My only real complain about the UI is the lack of standard menus--I tend to rely on the file menu as a crutch, whether or not it's necessary.

In short, I do like the program, especially as it's free.

RawShooter Essentials

So, just for fun, I downloaded the free version of pixmantec's RAW editing software (which can be found here) and took a quick shot around the house to see how well it worked.

Bottom Line: It worked well enough overall. Here's the RAW image exported "just the way it was shot" with no changes made in RawShooter:

Ironically, I think this image actually looks better (at least at this size in jpeg format) than the one I ended up with.

It seems like one of the better ways to easily test the quality of a program is to use their auto features and see how well they work. This program had an option to automatically set the white balance, so I did that. Other than that, there were sliders for saturation, exposure, (shadow and highlight) contrast, fill light, and hue.

There was a histogram and a few "appearance" settings, but it was all fairly basic. Then again, what can you expect for free? It's certainly better than not being able to use RAW images at all.

Converting the images was a bit strange. You had to "add the image to the batch queue," which then converted the image immediately. It only converts images into .tiff format, but it did automatically open Photoshop for me once the image was converted.

The image I ended up with looks like this:

RAW files vs JPEG

Chances are, anyone who's somewhat serious about photography or even bothering to read a blog "dedicated to the creation and use of an open digital negative format" isn't going to need much prodding as to the benefits of using RAW over JPEG when shooting. Nonetheless, I'm going to link to this article at PictureCorrect.com that harps on the benefits of RAW.

The most interesting bit in the article however, was not the funny little details about why RAW is a better format, but how Pixmantec offers a free RAW editing program called RawShooter Essentials. If you're too poor to have anything as newfangled and fancy as Photoshop CS2 (or too honest to steal a copy), then this is probably a good tool to get your hands on.

In stark contrast to the new Adobe beta for Lightroom, it's an app that seems to be available for PC only. I'm going to play with this one a bit and let you know how it goes.

Free chapters? I'm there

It turns out that the folks at creativepro.com have arranged to post an entire chapter (or at least at 18 full pages it's long enough to be a chapter) from  Ben Long's new book Getting Started with Camera Raw.

You can click through to creativepro and read their little blurb, but the real goodies can be found here. It's in .pdf format so download before opening if you'd like your own copy.

In this chapeter, which starts with the header "Where the Bits Are: Linear vs. Nonlinear Data," Ben talks about adjusting levels and touches on how to set your exposure when shooting. Most of the stuff in this chapter is pretty basic but useful tutorial info on image adjustment tools in Camera Raw.

The lightroom is abuzz

You'd have to be ignoring the world of Adobe and photo-editing software not to notice the gigantic to-do about Adobe's new app called "Lightroom."

Adobe just released a free public beta, probably hoping to simultaneously iron out some bugs and grab back a portion of the market they lost to Apple's Aperture. In conjunction with the beta, the NAPP has put up a Lightroom Learning Center, with videos and guides, including contributions from Photoshop TV hosts, on how to use Lightroom.

If, like me, you're curious about how the Lightroom beta stacks up against Aperture, you can find an overview of the differences and features on Digital Inspiration here, or you can go ahead and be a true geek and just download the beta.

If I get a chance to play with the beta later on I'll let you know. It's currently only available for Mac.

Aperture and LightRoom

As anyone who keeps a close eye on AppleInsider already knows, Adobe is not going to sid idly by while Apple trods on their market-toes. Up until recently, the RAW tools that come with CS2 were more or less the extent of available tools for working with RAW images.

That changed when Apple released Aperture, which, although it's gotten some grief for being slow and poor, even from hardcore fans and former top employees, it's also been praised for it's good handling of RAW image editing.

In any case, Adobe is expected to preview the application LightRoom at MacWorld Expo next week. More info here.

[FOLLOWUP: Apparently, Adobe has released a public beta of LightRoom today. Fun!]