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Converting current RAW images to Open RAW

Please pardon my ignorance if this has been covered somewhere and I just didn't notice it.

I was wondering if there's anything in the works as far as software for converting existing RAW images into an open format? An open format right from the camera would obviously be great, but it does nothing to solve the problem of aging RAW files that may lose support in the future.

I don't know what kind of technical problems exist for this kind of software, but it seems to me that it could be made as a batch processing plugin for UFRaw. Add in the ability to do lossless compression and you'd have something that's quite practical for backup purposes.

While I'm dreaming, let's throw in the ability to create a portable RAW file, something that's reduced in detail to get the file down to under 2mb that could be more easily distributed over the web.

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DudeMan – Sat, 2007/02/03 – 6:20am

As you'll see from the

As you'll see from the ongoing argument between Juergen Specht and Barry Pearson you've just opened a can of worms...

DNG goes some way to being the open format you describe. It is proprietary (owned by Adobe) but documented, at least in the current version (and yes Barry, probably for future versions). Personally I agree with Juergen that there are questions over it's usefulness while we don't have full documentation of proprietary raw formats.

While I'm dreaming, let's throw in the ability to create a portable RAW file, something that's reduced in detail to get the file down to under 2mb that could be more easily distributed over the web..

You could always use PNG or TIFF if you want a portable image format. Wouldn't you rather distribute finished images rather than Raw images?

batsys – Sat, 2007/02/10 – 6:38am
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