[CREATE] Re: raw processing

[Gilles Caulier]

Le Mercredi 15 Mars 2006 15:09, Alexandre Prokoudine a écrit :
> 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
>

Fine for me...

> 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.

If you want mean image data or image metadata ? It's not the same...

>
> 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.

sure...

>
> 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 

not initial : it's complete and support 16 bits color depth ! Forget digiKam 
0.8.1 that only support 8 bits/color/pixels. The next 0.9.0 release will be 
available like beta1 during May will support all RAW files in 16 bits to edit 
in Image editor and Showfoto. The image data after decoding need to be saved 
in TIFF or PNG file format to preserve 16 bits color depth. 

In the future, DNG file format will be supported in read/write. I have planed 
later than 0.9.0 release to provide a RAW file converter in the fly dirrectly 
in camera interface with metadata support !

In the same way, a new tool will be created to batch convert RAW files from 
HDD in other file formats : TIFF/PNG/DNG.

Actually, digikam 0.9.0 use Exiv2 library to manage metadata + an internal 
class named DMetadata, for example to manage Exif/Iptc raw file profiles 
generated by Imagemagick during file conversion.

About Raw file conversion, I have started a new C++ class based on last dcraw 
implementation to extract image data from RAW file without suing an external 
dcraw instance. The implementation still uncomplete

> 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.

Well take a on the fresh screenshots here : 

http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/10
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/24
http://www.digikam.org/?q=image/tid/25

and developers blogs :

http://www.digikam.org/?q=blog

>
> 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 ;)

no, i'm in French Alps this week end. Sorry (:=)))...

Gilles Caulier

PS : I CC this message to the lead developer of Album Shaper. I'm sure that it 
will be interressed