OpenRAW

Adobe has already offered a standard RAW format (DNG), and has tools to convert many proprietary RAW formats already. I think that OpenRAW should promote that.

Curt, are you aware of a single technical reason why DNG cannot be answer to the goals of people here?

Many people are wary about DNG, but that tends to be because it is owned by Adobe, not because of any specific technical reason.

Although OpenRAW is campaigning for publication of proprietary Raw formts, that alone does not satisfy the goals. In 5 years time, I don't want just a specification of my camera's Raw format, I want s/w that handles those Raw files.

In effect, the reason we need those formats to be documented isn't because we, as photographers, want to see the documentation. It is because we want to use s/w that can handle them, and the s/w writers would be better off with the documentation instead of having to reverse-engineer the formats.

I don't really care whether the documentation of existing formats is made public, or just to s/w developers. I would read it for my camera if I had it, just out of interest, but don't need to.

But, strategically, the only satisfactory answer to multi-vendor interworking of this sort is to move towards common standards, away from proprietary formts. Merely documenting the latter is at best only a step on the way.

I believe it would be bad to give the camera manufacturers the view that all they need to do to make photographers happy is to publish their formats. No - we want them to move towards standard formats. We mustn't let them off the hook.