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Posted by: isaacl Jul 2 2003, 04:43 PM

Is there any chance of getting RAW support in the near future?
This is usually the lossless picture format used in digital cameras, or at least the "Professional" ones.

If PMView is gonna be "Pro", shouldn't it support RAW as well? :-)

I think it might have to be different for each model (not sure), but there are only a handful of major digi-cam manufacturers with RAW. (Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Kodak?)
Heck, I'd be willing to pay a little extra for a plugin that does this.

As I understand most RAW image format is easy for programmer, but not necessarily for user.


Isaac

Posted by: Peter Jul 6 2003, 11:10 AM

Every camera manufacturer has its own "RAW" format.

Most RAW formats are a nightmare for the programmer. The specification is usually not disclosed, leaving the programmers to do an ugly hack (reverse engineering) of the file format. The camera manufacturer may also change the format between camera models rendering the code useless because the change was not anticipated...

Supporting RAW is best done by using the camera manufacturer supplied DLLs. Unfortunately this is a no-go as camera manufacturers do not provide DLLs for OS/2...

Thanks,

Posted by: Teijo Kaakinen Sep 12 2003, 10:09 PM

I also would like support for the raw format. All of the better new digital cameras use it, and it will eventually become increasingly ubiqitous. There already are some open source programs that from what I hear do a good job of handling it. The source code for one that places no restrictions on use is available at

http://www2.primushost.com/~dcoffin/powershot/

The author says: "There are no restrictions on this code, although I would like to receive credit for it. Donations are welcome, especially if you're using my code commercially."

It would be a most welcome addition to PMView capabilities.

Posted by: Peter Sep 13 2003, 09:34 AM

Thanks for the link. I'll look into this. However, there is one big problem with this and it is that PMView's automatic file detection would not work. It would need to rely on that the file extension is ".RAW".

Even with this restriction, any bugs or oddities in the third party code could possibly cause PMView to crash or cause other damage if there is an unrecognized .RAW file on the drive that causes the third party decoder to bail out...

Thanks,

Posted by: Gregory L. Marx Sep 15 2003, 03:38 AM