rawformat

Truly lossless?

This is kind of old news, since the post I'm grabbing off of Fazal Majid's blog was actually last updated a year ago, but it's interesting enough, especially since I imagine some of the Nikon cameras mentioned are still in use.

From the post:

Implicit is the assumption that the RAW file is pristine and have not been tampered with, unlike JPEGs that had post-processing such as white balance or Bayer interpolation applied to them, and certainly no lossy compression. This is why the debate can get emotional when a controversy erupts, such as whether a specific camera's RAW format is lossless or not.

The post then proceeds to look at whether Nikon (compressed & uncompressed) RAW formats are actually lossless. Interesting, especially if you shoot with Nikon.

Aperture 1.1 Ships: Now a Better Tool for Raw Shooters

Digital Outback reports on the new release of Aperture. There's a lot to like here. They say it "shows that Apple is carefully listening." Check out the entire review here.

The specifics regarding Raw:

"The raw conversion is now versioned in Aperture. That means if you have worked on images in Aperture 1.0 and like the results this update will not change the images you have done. But the new version 1.1 allows more control for your RAW files.

On a per image basis you can control:

* Contrast (mainly lower the contrast as 1.0 is the recommended default)
* Sharpening at the RAW conversion level
* Color Noise removal
* Auto Noise Compensation
* Because we mainly use low ISO images the "Auto Noise Compensation" did not show obvious changes in our tests. The other settings are clearly useful."

Digital Outback is a great site for keeping up on Raw developments.

API stands for Open Raw Format

Forum poster John Valentine at the OpenRaw forums put up a call for "an API [to be] be written (primarily for image processing applications, and later for image readers and writers), that allows the embedding and use of processing methods within the raw file."

The way I understand it, and I had to look on Wikipedia to find API, so my understanding could easily be way off, is that Valentine is asking someone to build some sort of Java program that would utilize decoding information buried inside RAW files themselves to call up appropriate processing algorithms.

At the very least, embedding support within the RAW files would ensure that no unsupported formats will become inaccessible in the future.

On the surface that sounds like a cool idea, because it both advocates some form of standards while at the same time allows companies to preserve some aspect of the proprietary formats that seem so important to them.

I'm sure there would be quite a few difficulties involved in actually implementing it, including the design of the API, the coding, and the willingness of camera makers to go along with the project. But it's good to see ideas floating around.

Bibble 4.7

Bibble Labs released Bibble version 4.7 today, which is their RAW-workflow solution. There is both a PRO and a LITE version available, at $130 and $70 respectively.

From the press release:

Bibble Labs, Inc. today announced immediate availability of version 4.7 of its popular Raw Workflow software. Building upon the recent seamless integration of Noise Ninja technology, Bibble 4.7 fully integrates Athentech's DIMA Award winning Perfectly Clear^® automatic image correction technology into the raw workflow.

Perfectly Clear^® is new, award winning technology, invented for the digital world, modeled on the physics principles of light. Unlike traditional analogue based approaches that actually damage true color, create artifacts, and cause clipping, Perfectly Clear is the only solution that operates like the human eye... optimizing the light in each and every pixel... perfectly preserving the photographer's memory. The result is stunning pictures regardless of how viewed - electronically or printed on media.

Universal solutions

With the addition of Apple's new Boot Camp setup, it seems like they've solved the (temporary) problem of using high-performance image software through Rosetta on Intel Macs: skip the Mac OS.

Mac OS update fixes TIFF EXIF

Aperture got a quick fix yesterday from the Mac OSX 10.4.6 update, specifically:

• Aperture will no longer unexpectedly quit when exporting a file with keywords that contain twelve or more Cyrillic characters.
• EXIF data is now exported with TIFF images in Aperture.

And given the recent fun that's been had with EXIF data, that's probably a good thing ;)

Ganked from Rob Galbraith.

Fun with HDR

I've been looking around the HDR photos available on FlickR, and a lot of them are really cool and addicting to look at. Since I didn't know much about HDR (or HDRI - High Dynamic Range Imaging) to begin with, I took a look through the Wikipedia entry and around at some of the tools and methods for messing with it. 

It turns out that making an HDR image is basically a process of compiling several different exposures to get a large range on shadows and highlights - in other words getting a High Dynamic Range. I was disappointed to note that compiling the image exposure was a feature not present in CS1 - the version of Photoshop I'm usuing. I'm too honest to download CS2 for free and too cheap to buy myself a new copy, so for now I'll have to do without it.

Regardless, the images I've seen look very cool, and I wish I had more of the tools to play around with it.