dcraw is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

computer program which is able to read numerous

raw image format A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and the ...

files, typically produced by mid-range and high-end digital cameras. dcraw converts these images into the standard TIFF and PPM image formats. This conversion is sometimes referred to as ''developing'' a raw image (by analogy with the process of film development) since it renders raw image sensor data (a "digital negative") into a viewable form. A number of other image processing programs use dcraw internally to enable them to read raw files. Development of dcraw began on February 23, 1997. Version 1.0 was released in revision 1.18, on May 5, 2000. Versions up to 3.15 used the name ''Canon PowerShot Converter'', starting with v3.40 the name was ''Raw Photo Decoder'', switching to ''Raw Photo Decoder "dcraw"'' in v5.70. Version 8.86 supported 300 cameras. The development has stalled, with only two releases since May 2015 and the last release dated June 2018, but parts of dcraw are included in LibRaw.

Motivation

While most camera manufacturers supply raw image decoding software for their cameras, this software is almost always proprietary, and often becomes unsupported when a camera model is discontinued. The file formats themselves are often undocumented, and several manufacturers have gone so far as to encrypt all or part of the data in their raw image format, in an attempt to prevent third-party software from accessing it. Given this ever-expanding plethora of raw image formats, and uncertain and inconsistent support for them by the manufacturers, many photographers worry that their valuable raw images may become unreadable as the applications and operating systems required become obsolete. In contrast to proprietary decoding software, dcraw strives for simplicity,

portability Portability may refer to: *Portability (social security), the portability of social security benefits * Porting, the ability of a computer program to be ported from one system to another in computer science ** Software portability, the portability ...

, and consistency, as expressed by its author:

So here is my mission: Write and maintain an ANSI C program that decodes any raw image from any digital camera on any computer running any operating system.

Design

Because many raw image formats are specific to one make or model of camera, dcraw is frequently updated to support new models. For many proprietary raw image formats, dcraw's source code (based largely on reverse-engineering) is the best—or only—publicly available documentation. dcraw currently supports the raw formats of several hundred cameras. dcraw is built around the Unix philosophy. The program is a command line tool which takes a list of raw image files to process, along with any image adjustment options desired. dcraw also serves as the basis for various high-level raw image-processing applications (such as viewers and converters), both free and open source software as well as proprietary software.

GUI front-ends

Several GUI front-ends for dcraw are available. These applications use dcraw as a back-end to do the actual processing of raw images, but present a graphical interface with which the image processing options can be adjusted. * AZImage – image converter (uses LibRaw rather than dcraw) for Windows * darktable – a standalone raw developer for Windows, Linux, and macOS * dcraw-assist – for Linux * dcRAW-X – for macOS * digiKam – for Linux * DNG Viewer by ideaMK – raw image viewer for Windows * EasyHDR – for Windows * gimp-dcraw –

GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...

plug-in for Windows, Linux, and macOS * Helicon Filter – photo editor, can use dcraw for raw processing for Windows * Konvertor – for Windows * nUFRaw – a standalone raw developer, a new version of UFRaw for Linux * Phiewer – for macOS * RAWDrop – for Windows * Rawstudio – a standalone raw developer for Linux * SilkRaw – exports embedded thumbnails and launch batch conversion for Amiga OS4, AROS, and MorphOS * SNS-HDR – for Windows * UFRaw – a standalone raw developer and GIMP plug-in for Windows, Linux, and macOS

References

External links

* {{Official website
dcraw compiled for Microsoft Windows
by Axel Rietschin
dcraw compiled for Microsoft Windows
by Bartłomiej Okonek Digital photography Free photo software Free software programmed in C Photo software for Linux Raw image processing software