Most passionate photographers like to carefully control all kinds of details related to their photos — from adjusting colours and lights, to correcting red eyes or cropping. And for this reason, they prefer setting their camera to take pictures in RAW format. Also known as “digital negatives”, RAW image files have the great advantage of allowing a wide array of computer editing options.
If you like to take your quality photos with a Fujifilm camera and have just got the new X-E1 model, for example — you will soon discover your RAW image files have the RAF extension. This is the typical format for all Fujifilm cameras, and while generally preferred by photographers, it might prove difficult to handle at first. Why? Because RAF files are not recognized by many regular photo viewers, so you may have problems opening and editing them. Moreover, they have a very large size (up to 6 times more than a JPEG), so sending or moving a large group of photos might prove to be equally difficult.
There is a quick and easy solution for solving all the problems above, while at the same time being able to edit your RAF images any way you like: use a powerful converter! I personally recommend reaConverter that can be downloaded and tried for free at reaconverter.com. Whether you are a professional photographer or just an amateur learning the tricks of the trade, this software will be everything you need for handling your RAF images, as well as several other RAW formats, such as ORF or ARW (see the full list of RAW formats supported by reaConverter).
To give you a glimpse of what this program can do, I have selected my top 5 image editing options that allow me to control how my RAF image will look like before converting it to an accessible format such as JPEG, PNG or TIFF. Here they are below:
- Rotate, Crop or Resize photos.
- Adjust the RGB, or correct the amount of Red, Green and Blue in the image.
- Adjust the HLS balance (Hue / Luminance / Saturation). This allows you to fine-tune the colours in the image, correct their clarity and tones.
- Edit the Colour Resolution. You can opt for a smaller or a larger number of colours, depending on the size you want your photo to have.
- Apply Watermarking. This will help you make sure the image will not be used by someone else without your permission. The watermark is a text or an image that will appear on all converted photos, with a customizable size, position and transparency.
Advanced users can do the same using command line converter in manual, automated or scheduled mode. You are welcome to contact our technical support when you have any questions about reaConverter.
Online RAF converter:
ReaConverter is a great software for efficiently managing a large amount of pictures, on a frequent basis. However, if you are planning to convert only a few RAF photos and only once in a while, then you can also try fast online photo converter IMVERTER.com.