Camera manufacturers should document...

Camera manufacturers should document their RAW formats so they are not stuck in the situation where photographers avoid their equipment because someone has written a killer app for processing RAW images that can't be used on their RAW images. I can think of several applications which need to work with RAW images, or would benefit from them:

1) DxO Optics - optimization of images based on lens/sensor camera parameters.
2) Any stitching/panorama application
3) Any cataloging/database application - can you imagine not being able to catalog your RAW images?
5) Helicon Focus - allows layering of several images with different focus points to create one image with infinite depth of field.
6) Download/Import applications which allow sophisticated renaming as well as simple insertion of relevant metadata on multiple images.
7) Adobe Camera Raw - advanced highlight recovery.
8) many others that didn't pop into mind in the 2 minutes it took to write this.

Camera makers should be focused on writing killer apps for their cameras which will encourage photographers to use their hardware. If their apps and the support of their RAW files are second rate then they have a second rate product.

Camera Manufacturers: Support the developers who make your product better - at no cost to you!

P.S. Software Development Kits can't possibly anticipate all the capabilities a developer might require, and in trying to be all things to all developers they are inherently less efficient than what a developer could write for their particular application.

Get with the program you camera manufacturers! We want to love you.

Jeff Buttel – Sat, 2005/04/23 – 2:51pm