[CREATE] raw processing

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

Greetings,

I usually try to avoid crossposting kind of stuff, but since some of
concerned people are not subscribed to the list, let it be so this
time.

For those of you who doesn't know what CREATE is: this is an
umbrella-project where developers of graphics (and hopefully
audio/midi too) applications meet and talk about uniform solutions and
standards.

Details: http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/About
Activities: http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#Specifications

Those who have experience of work with Windows software for processing
RAW know that each and every application has its own way to store
changes introduced to originals.

Adobe Camera Raw saves them to .xmp files for every changed file, e.g.
if IMG_0001.CR2 file was changed, IMG_0001.xmp appears. Canon's native
RAW processing software saves all changes to a database file
ZbThumbnail.info on per-directory basis. Picasa saves Picasa.ini on
per-directory basis. And there are many more 3rd-party and camera
manufacturer's applications.

Thus, once you applied changes in one application, you cannot load
them in some other one.

Currently we have UFRaw as standalone application and as GIMP plug-in,
a couple of (obsolete) RAW loaders for GIMP, initial RAW loader
plug-in for Krita, initial support for RAW processing in Digikam and
plans to introduce RAW processing in F-Spot soon.

UFRaw can save its own ID files on per-file basis for further batch
processing. F-Spot tends to keep everything in its own sqlite database
kept in depths of ~/.gnome/. I don't know the way Digikam works,
haven't tried latest version.

Does anybody else perceive it as a problem? If so, is there some way
we could avoid situation we have on Windows/Mac OS X since workflows
in these applications/plug-ins are different to some extent?

P.S. Some (most) of you are attending Libre Graphics Meeting this
weekend, probably you could have a talk together ;)

Alexandre