Category Archives: RAW formats

How to Control Brightness and White Balance when Converting RAW Images

Many professional photographers prefer shooting RAW images — instead of the more popular JPEG — for the obvious benefits of this format. When set in RAW mode, the camera’s sensor captures everything, or as close as you can get to what you see with your naked eye. This translates into great image quality, wonderful view of details and high levels of brightness, among others. Plus, during post-processing, photographers have the chance to customize RAW photos according to several criteria, retouching and adjusting colors the way they want.

As RAW images tend to take up a lot of space and sometimes slow down the camera, not to mention they are not viewable or printable using regular viewers or printers, their conversion to more accessible formats is an actual must.

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Convert NEF Images to TIFF without Quality Loss

Nikon is one of the most popular brands of digital cameras, widely favored both by professional and amateur photographers. But if you are the fresh owner of a Nikon camera and you have just downloaded the first series of photographs taken with it, you might be puzzled by the extension of the image files stocked on your computer.

NEF is the trademarked extension of RAW photos taken with Nikon cameras. Many photographers prefer to take RAW photos (also called “digital negatives”), instead of the usual JPEG, because they contain minimally processed data and they can easily be customized using digital editing software. However, their size tends to be very large and they are not supported by regular image viewers. Plus, handling them requires the use of advanced digital editing programs, which are not particularly easy to use. Moreover, sending or uploading RAW images to photo sharing sites is impossible if you don’t convert them to a more accessible format.

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Integrating RAW Image Conversion in Your Custom Solution

Command-line interface for RAW conversion.

RAW image conversion represents a key feature used by professional photographers, graphic artists, web designers and other types of advanced image editors. In case you are a developer who designs a program addressed to these users and which can deliver RAW conversion, together with a wide array of image editing options, reaConverter Pro is just what you need! Why? Because, as opposed to many other converters, reaConverter Pro not only supports a GUI interface, but can also be operated through command-line. Which means it can help you integrate a large variety of image conversions — including from the RAW format — in your very own custom solution.

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How to Open and Edit SRW files from Samsung Camera?

How to open SRW images from Samsung camera?

If you are the proud owner of a freshly released NX300, or of another Samsung camera model, you might soon discover that answering the question in the title is not as easy as it seems. When downloading the first series of photos on your computer, you might discover their format is not JPEG, PNG or any another image extension that your regular photo viewer can easily recognize. Instead, you will see a bunch of SRW files that your computer does not know how to open and edit.

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PEF Image Files: 3 Steps for Handling Them Fast and Easy

Whether you are practicing photography professionally or just as a hobby, you probably like to enhance the quality of your digital pictures by adjusting things such as framing, contrast, white balance and exposure. And in order to have all the control you need on such aspects and several others when it comes to customizing your photo, you probably prefer creating images in a RAW format. In case you are also a Pentax fan, and just got a sleek K-30 model, for example, which you immediately set to take RAW images, you might be puzzled to discover a bunch of PEF files recorded on your camera’s memory card. What are these files and how to handle them?

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CR2 to TIF: Convert Format, Preserve Image Quality

If you are a fan of Canon cameras, you probably have a bunch of CR2 images stocked on your computer. CR2 is the proprietary format of Canon cameras, used for creating RAW images. Or in other words, images that you can later edit using advanced graphics editing software. While this format might be OK to use if you are a professional designer and if you have Adobe Photoshop or other similar programs installed on your computer, transfer CR2 images, sending or posting them online might pose some problems.

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I Received an ORF File by E-mail. How should I Open It?

We got this question from a reader who had just been sent an e-mail with an ORF file attached and wasn’t sure whether opening such files is safe or not. Moreover, if it is safe, what software would he need to open it? Because Windows did not seem to be able to handle the file with the regular programs installed.

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Convert DNG to JPG: As Easy as 1-2-3

dng_to_jpg
Professional photographers are always interested in finding the optimal file format for storing and editing their photographs. And in the past few years, more and more of them started to prefer the DNG extension.

Though when Adobe released the DNG (Digital Negative) format, in 2004, many people were skeptical about the need for an additional type of raw file when each camera manufacturer already had a typical raw extension for each brand — NEF for Nikon, ORF for Olympus, CR2 for Canon, in time the DNG format grew in popularity.

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Top 5 Image Editing Options When You Convert RAF Files

Fuji RAF

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.

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ARW Files: What Are They and How Can I Handle Them?

ARW

If you are a fan of Sony cameras, you probably came across this question while trying to see or send your digital photos. For a new owner of a Sony Cyber-shot DSC RX100, such as myself, handling ARW files turned out to be a tricky business. After taking the first series of photos with my brand new camera, I was quite excited to download and view them on my computer. However, I quickly started asking myself what type of files are these “ARWs” downloaded from my camera and why aren’t my regular image viewers able to open them?

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