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Adobe Blasts Nikon's Closed File Format
Joe Decker writes "Thomas Knoll, creator of Adobe Photoshop,
blasts Nikon's use of encryption to limit access to white-balance information contained in D2X RAW images files. Fearing the DMCA, Adobe won't reverse-engineer the file, slightly reducing Photoshop's support for those files.
Nikon responds. Is Adobe whining? Is Nikon shooting itself in the foot?" We've covered this previously.
Just to be clear. Have any of these links not been linked in a previous slashdot story; if so, which ones; and chronologically when were they posted on the webpages wherein they are linked in relation to the links FROM the previous slashdot story?
Ptobably not, as Nikon has already responded violently and Adobe is a rich, proprietary company, who doesn't want people writing unlicensed support for the PSD, and doesn't like what's happened with PDFs.
Fortunately, outside the Land Of The Free(tm), anyone can access Nikon's encrypted data with a simple GNU/Linux application
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Looks like Nikon's goofy encryption has been broken.
Oh, here's a link to dcraw which will blast through Nikon's bullshit.
Isn't this familiar to you? http://www.freesklyarov.org/
See http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/23/205 0249&tid=93&tid=155 for original story.
This posting is actually referring to the earlier news - but the above link refers to Nikons response...
If the licensing is so heinous that an open source project can't accept it
It isn't a problem for open source projects. They can already access the data. Well, those outside the US anyway, and people inside just need to download from outside...
It's Adobe, a proprietary US company, that's having problems.
Canon already offers a system for this very purpose: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0401/04012903canondvk e2.asp
:)
Of course, the feature here is that it can be turned on or off as the user wishes. Moreover, you don't need to encrypt a file format to create a valid digital signature for it.
The only reason for Nikon to do this is to make sure that they can charge a license fee for anyone who wants to be able to manipulate raw images taken with their hardware. The best solution for everybody would be to do the obvious thing: buy a Canon
What other digital camera manufacturers have documented their RAW file format?
o p.windows/browse_thread/thread/8636502afc4e20f9/60 6e144ad0af19c2?q=fuji+s2+white+balance+adobe&rnum= 7&hl=en#606e144ad0af19c2
Adobe has previously been having a similar problem with the Fuji WB's as it can been seen here, taken from the following thread on usenet:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/adobe.photosh
>Chris Cox Feb 20 2003, 10:08 pm show options
>It's out of agreement because the plugin cannot read the FUJI
>proprietary and undocumented data, and is making a guess at
>the whitepoint based on the image contents.
>
>If you would like to see this improved, please contact Fuji and
>ask them to work with Adobe to read their proprietary and
>undocumented file format(s).
Adobe is stateside. The US courts will have jurisdiction over its actions, wherever they are committed.
The NEF file format is Nikon's RAW data, ie: not compressed to JPEG or other format, it's pure image data from the camera's sensor.
By default, Nikon cameras (that are able to shoot RAW) convert to JPEG on the camera, and you have to select RAW manually. Sadly though as you discovered, they don't supply fully licensed software that can read RAW data with their cameras, beyond a trial version of Nikon Capture (this might have worked for you?).
Granted - their software is a total pain in the ass to install. I've just recovered from a situation in which I installed updated 4.1 to 4.2, but the installer crashed, and 4.1 refused to reinstall because it detected the remnants of 4.2 and aborted - leaving me with no usable version of the software. In the end I had to borrow a copy of version 3 which didn't have the newer-version-check in the installer, and then patch up from there.
I'm not bothered about NEF being encrypted or whatever, but I do think it's lame that they don't supply a fully licensed copy of Nikon Capture with their cameras that can shoot RAW. I own a D70 and had to fork out for a copy of it to make the most of the camera. Other than that, Photoshop natively supports NEF files, although IMO the remote control and live previewing features of Capture make it worth the cost.
Nikon already provides support through plugins. Adobe wants to integrate it. i.e., make it so that 'It Just Works.' (tm)
No. There's a difference between a lossless format and the camera's raw format. A camera raw image file contains the unprocessed data from the image sensor of a digital camera.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
You mean "he would never have been arrested".
What most /.-ers miss is that Adobe Camera RAW as well as most other converters such as Capture One or RawShooter don't rely on manufacturers' SDK to convert RAW files. This way they can achive better results.
I don't know about Nikon, but for my Canon I know that ACR produces far better results than Canon RAW Converter.
> Will this turn into something like Open Office's support for the .DOC format?
No, because nobody cares about this one. You have been able to, and still can, use third party software to process this type of Nikon file. What's at issue is the ability of US based Open Source developers to use the format in software they want to subsequently release the source code to. It's hard to think of a more inconsequential issue. The moment Nikon stands to lose profit over this they'll change their position. At the moment, it's barely worth their while replying to emails about the matter.
*Sigh*
Even the transformation from RAW to a format with lossless compression is a lossy conversion. See, for instance, here, here, and here.
That doesn't make any sense. Try "never have been". Or, if you are basing this on what you hear said, try "never 'ave been" or maybe even "never've been".
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
There's pretty good iPod integration with a number of music players. Personally, I use Foobar 2000, which works quite well with my iPod.
Typically the SDKs don't provide full, unfettered access to the manufacturer's raw format, just a subset. Canon is as bad as Nikon in this regard. Despite that, Thomas Knoll has usually managed to decode any given camera's raw format well enough that Adobe Camera Raw produces results as good or better than the manufacurer's software and with more parameters that can be adjusted.
.CRW 2 or 3 times faster than Canon's own software.
My experience with a Canon G4 is that ACR not only is more flexible (and even allows recovery of blown highlights if at least one color is not blown on the highlight), but converts images from
Knoll has essentially reverse engineered the formats for the cameras that ACR supports, but is being extra cautious with the Nikon situation because of the possible DMCA legal issues where encryption is involved. There has been no encryption involved in the other formats ACR handles.
Adobe recently unveiled XML-based DNG (Digital NeGative) as a universal open format, which they are encouraging all camera manufacturers to support.
What other digital camera manufacturers have documented their RAW file format?
That entirely misses the point.
Undocumented RAW formats are one thing, and can in most cases be reverse-engineering quite trivially just by using commonsense.
But what Nikon did was to *ENCRYPT* the values contained in one particular set of fields, those holding the white balance information.
This is totally unrelated to the structure of their RAW files being undocumented. It requires a decryption key to release that data (which is the photographer's data anyway, not theirs), and commonsense cannot possibly reveal it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
One key difference is that Nikon has not only left their file format undocumented, they've actively encrypted a key image parameter, allegedly as a spoiler tactic to prevent 3rd party developers fully parsing the files without signing up as 'approved' developers. If Nikon decides you are a 'bona fide' software company worthy of the honour, you can get hold of an SDK (apparently Windows/Mac C++ only with binary runtime libraries) but won't be given a full description of the file format. This has serious implications for the use of Nikon NEF files as an archival format (will Nikon's SDK components work on whatever OS you are running in 20 years time?), for developers who want to use their own algorithms (like Adobe), and for FOSS projects. Luckily, Dave Coffin has already reverse engineered the decryption algorithm in the current version of his open source dcraw RAW converter, so we're not yet locked out of the NEF format. What isn't yet clear is whether Nikon will continue with this sort of tactic in future NEF versions, and if Adobe will overcome their DMCA concerns to fully support NEF in their ACR raw converter (assuming they're not just grandstanding). Incidentally, there's a brief description by Tom Christiansen of the white balance encryption algorithm here, and a pointer by Thomas Knoll (of Photoshop fame) to the relevant section of the dcraw code here.
Nikon released a statement late last week regarding the "encryption" (not technically encryption, but instead, obfustication) of the RAW format (NEF) photo data taken with a D2X camera:
Nikon: You Are Wrong. Period. And do not insult me by lying.Update: Nikon has removed this statement from their web site.
The thing that galls me about Nikon's statement is that Nikon is essentially telling me that I need to use their processing solution, or one that they approve, or not use the NEF format at all.
They can wax poetic in PR legalese all they want, but at the end of the day, all I am reading is that Nikon is saying that my data is for me to use as they see fit. No, Nikon, it is not.
A camera is an instrument to take a photograph, and that's all. Now, however, the coming of age of digital has married irrevocably cameras and software. Without software, a digital camera is absolutely useless. It produces nothing tangible, and to make that photograph anything more than a small image on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, you simply must have software.
That said, if the images are now aetherial bits, do they not still belong to us, the photographers, or our assignees?
I think the answer to that is yes. They certainly would if they were film images. And has any camera manufacturer ever mandated what film processing methods must be used with photographs taken with their camera? No. It would have been insane for one to even try.
And this is insane now.
As such, I think that the SDK should be freely available to anyone who asks for it, and at the very least, to any owner of a Nikon digital camera. Why should I not be allowed to write my own software? Because Nikon says that I can't, as I am not a 'bona fide' developer? Do I need to be one, to write applications to fiddle with my own images?
No. The data are mine.
Let me use a real world example: I photograph a lot of panoramics. I use Panorama Tools a great deal of the time to stitch those programs together. Now then, PTools does not have an embedded interface for NEF files, especially D2X NEF files. Let's say that I wanted to open my NEF files and input them programmatically into Panorama Tools. With this press release, Nikon is telling me that I cannot have the information to do the task I want to do. In other words, sod off, pay us to play.
This whole issue reminds me much of Gillette, the razor company, when their mantra was "sell the razor cheap and the blades at a high price." Instead this time, it is "sell the camera high and continue to reach into their pockets to allow the photographer to use his/her pictures. Use our software, or someone we like, or do not use your data as you see fit."
Worst of all, this has been enabled by the US government, what with the asinine provision of the Digital Milleneum Copyright Act. The DCMA makes it illegal to reverse engineer encrypted files. Bottom line is that one can argue that NEF files are not encrypted, but in reality, they are, because the data are obfusticated...and without Nikon's blessing, one risks enormous civil fines and prison to bypass Nikon's methods.
I hope at the end of the day Nikon is punished severely by the marketplace for this. I truly hope that Canon makes a point to point out in their marketing that not only do they not charge for their RAW conversion tools but that developers can get the information they need to extend the capabilities of Canon cameras.
That sounds severe, but the only thing Nikon will understand is a beat-down from their potential customers. And this time, Nikon deserves a black eye.
Uhhh... you realize that many large cities prohibit the sale of photos of their buildings without buying the rights? Or that selling photos of photos, ads, sculptures, paintings, artwork, etc can get you sued if you don't acquire the rights to the original? It's called "photography clearance".
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
http://www.openraw.org/ OpenRAW is a group of photographers and other interested people advocating the open documentation of digital camera RAW files.
OK at this point I'm fed up with the Slashdot crowd completely misrepresenting the situation here by continually spewing incorrect facts. Now Nikon is doing something completely stupid here, but you should at least hang them on the stupid things that they are doing and not the stupid things that everyone thinks they are doing.
Here are the Facts:
Nikon provides FREE tools to work with NEF files. Both Nikon View and PictureProject are provided free with Nikon cameras and they both fully support working with NEF images. Now their support is minimal, but it lets you do a lot of what you need.
Nikon provides a FREE Photoshop plugin to work with NEF files. It's not nearly as fully featured as ACR, but it is free and lets you adjust White Balance and Exposure Compensation (again very crappy compared to ACR or Nikon Capture).
Nikon provides a FREE SDK that allows you to include NEF support in your application for free. There are no licensing fees for this and they give it to pretty much anyone. Of course there are those that will bitch about needing to be a "bona fide" software developer but that language just comes from a very crappy Japanese to English translation. I don't know exactly what Nikon meant with that but I have yet to hear of anyone asking for the SDK and not getting it.
Adobe is the only one who has even mentioned the DMCA. Nikon hasn't mentioned it, they haven't threatened anyone and they have yet to take any action against anyone supporting D2X NEF decoding (Bibble is decrypting the WB). Nikon hasn't really explained this asinine move but they haven't threatened anyone either. Remember it was Adobe that put a programmer in jail for DMCA violations. Adobe, rather than challenge the DMCA has decided to respect it since they have used it in the past. It would be far more respectable for Adobe if they announced that they were going to break the encryption and be prepared challenge the DMCA in court. But no, they'd rather stand by it so they can use it to their advantage down the road.
Nikon has not asserted any ownership of your images. This outcry has come from the general bitching that everyone has with the encryption issue. Everyone's falsely concluding that just because something is encrypted in the file that that means that Nikon owns your image. How absurd is that! My guess is that there's more than just white balance that is encrypted in the file. The reason for the outcry is because out of the stuff that is encrypted, the WB settings is what is used by ACR and other RAW converters. I wouldn't be surprised if proprietary information about the CCD, the Lens used, how the lens works, etc. was stored in the NEF and that sensitive information is also encrypted. It's just that the RAW converters need the WB information and that too just happens to be encrypted. The RAW converters just ignore the other stuff because they don't know what it is.
It's perfectly easy to hang Nikon on this without messing up all the facts.
The paper is here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html
Essentially they're trying to create an open, ISO certified format that is capable of holding all the RAW information that a camera maker would need. This would future proof images so that they can be read by a number of tools.
cheers,
Kris
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Unless GS cleaned up its act, it's simply no match for Acrobat tools when you're seriously working with PDFs.
We have GS on all machines here, and Acrobat on three. I never use GS. It crashes, can't handle multiple page sizes (iirc), has an absolutely horrible interface (distilling ps is a nightmare for me, let alone non power-users).. in short, paying for Acrobat is worth it.