Slashdot Mirror
A RAW repository, The Internet Archive and OpenRAW
Stan writes "I just read this in the OpenRAW mailing list, OpenRAW plans to create a RAW repository, a final resting place for RAW file documentations of current and already abandoned digital cameras. The RAW repository will be hosted in the Internet Archive, which describes themselves as a digital archive of the Internet and other cultural artifacts. And they have all reasons to support OpenRAW, they currently photograph billions of book pages with cameras and store them in RAW format. Unfortunately the camera makers think different (which is not always a good thing)."
In the last slashdot article on OpenRAW
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
The point isn't that you can get a jpg out of your camera -- I haven't seen a digital camera that can't -- the problem is that the original, uncompressed data generally isn't in an open format.
in this case (cameras) raw reffers to the fact its the raw unprocessed data from the CCD
this has to be processed to convert it to a form that we would recognise as an image file. This can happen either on the camera or on a PC.
However This conversion process may well not be fully reversable (due to rounding errors) and bloats the data considerablly (CCDs generally make a red green OR blue value at each location image files generally have red green AND blue at each location so turning CCD output into an image file always involves interpolation) so from an archivists point of view its best to keep the raw data unfortunately that raw data is often in a closed format.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
What is this "RAW" format?
RAW doesn't really refer to any single file format. RAW refers to pulling the unprocessed (raw) sensor data out of a digital camera. The actual layout of the bits varies from brand to brand, and often from model to model.
Why do photographers want access to the raw data anyway?
Many professional/prosumer photographers like to archive the version of their work that contains as much of the originally captured information as possible. In the professional film world, this meant processed slides (for consumers, this meant processed negatives). In the digital world, the RAW file contains all the data captured by the camera, before some data is lost by compression and other data is added through interpolation.
Can't they just pull a lossless image out of the camera and be happy?
No. The very act of converting the raw data into an image involves lossful processing of the data. Out of gamut color data is discarded, and CCD color data is interpolated to fill surrounding pixels.