Many thanks to the 13 users who responded to my survey about RAW usage
in Shotwell. Below, I'll summarize the results of the survey and then
discuss some of the RAW changes we're planning to implement for Shotwell
0.11 later this summer.
1. What kind of camera do you have?
Canon: 7 users (EOS 40D/450D/500D/550D, S90, IS1200, Digital Rebel XT)
Nikon: 4 users (D80, D90, D3000, D5000, D7000)
Sony: 2 users (NEX-5)
Olympus: 2 users (E-450, E510, OM-2)
Panasonic: 1 user (Lumix DMC-LX2)
Numerous respondents have more than one camera.
2. When you shoot RAW, do you usually shoot RAW+JPEG, or RAW only?
RAW + JPEG: 4 users
RAW only: 9 users
Conclusion: shooting only RAW is probably more popular, though RAW +
JPEG is also common.
3. What photo resolution do you shoot? If possible, can you tell us
the resolution of the JPEG images which your camera embeds in RAW
photos? (You can find out by running 'exiv2 -pp' on a photo, for
example.)
Responses to this question fell into 3 categories:
full-size embedded JPEGs (10-18 megapixels): 5 users
screen-size embedded JPEGs (1.5-3.5 megapixels): 5 users
thumbnail-size embeddd JPEGs (about 0.2 megapixels): 2 users (Nikon
D80/D90 cameras)
This was interesting. Almost every camera embeds JPEGs which are at
least screen size, which are good enough for many uses (e.g. casual
editing and uploading to sites like Facebook). Something like half of
cameras embed JPEGs which are as large as the RAW images themselves.
4. Generally speaking, how does Shotwell's default rendering of your
RAW photographs compare today with the JPEG images/previews generated
by your camera? Please respond with one of the following: much
better, better, about the same, worse, much worse, unusably bad. If
Shotwell's rendering is poor, can you describe in a few words how it
looks worse (e.g. distortion? color shift? underexposed appearance?)
about the same: 4 users
a bit worse: 3 users
poor: 5 users
5. Suppose that Shotwell offered one or more of the following modes.
Which would you use by default?
a) Shotwell develops all RAW photos at import time. (This is how
Shotwell works today.)
b) Shotwell develops RAW photos only when you first open them. This
would speed importing and save disk space, but might add a delay of
several seconds before you could edit or zoom into a RAW photo after
first opening it.
c) Shotwell stores RAW+JPEG pairs as a single unit, and uses the
JPEG for rendering.
d) Shotwell renders a RAW photo using the JPEG embedded inside it.
Many users indicated interest in more than one of the modes above. Here
are the total number of users interested in each mode:
a: 4
b: 2
c: 8
d: 4
6. With options (c) and (d) above, Shotwell could let you switch to a
RAW rendering for individual photos (and Shotwell would develop the
RAW photos only at that time.) Similarly, with options (a) and (b),
Shotwell could let you switch individual photos to render using an
embedded or paired JPEG. How often do you think you'd use this
switching feature?
Generally people would like to be able to switch like this.
7. Any other ideas or comments?
Numerous users pointed out that they want to be able to develop using an
external RAW editor, and then have Shotwell display the resulting
image. This is an alternative to modes (a)-(d) listed above.
OK - so those are the survey results. With these results in mind, we're
planning to make some improvements to Shotwell's RAW handling for 0.11.
Here's our current plan. RAW and JPEG photos with the same filename
prefix will now appear as a single photo in Shotwell and will be treated
as a single unit. You'll be able to right click on any RAW photo and
choose any of several rendering modes:
1. render using libraw (as Shotwell does today)
2. render using paired JPEG (if one is present)
3. render using embedded JPEG
4. render using external RAW editor
If you choose to render using an external editor, then Shotwell will
launch your editor of choice on the RAW file. In the external editor,
you'll make any desired adjustments and then save as a JPEG. Shotwell
will notice that JPEG and automatically associate it with the RAW file.
Furthermore, there will be a boolean option which lets you decide
whether Shotwell should develop RAW photos by default:
- If true, then Shotwell will use libraw rendering (1) for newly
imported photos, just like today.
- If false, then Shotwell will not develop your RAW photos at import
time. This will greatly speed importing and will cause Shotwell not to
create mimic files, which will save disk space. Shotwell will initially
render photos using a paired JPEG (2) if present, otherwise using an
embedded JPEG (3).
One further detail: when you render using an external editor, we don't
want to clobber the paired JPEG if one is present. Suppose that a RAW
photo is called PHOT001.CR2 and has a paired PHOT001.JPG. When
launching your external RAW editor, Shotwell will create a symbolic link
PHOT001_EXT.CR2 pointing to PHOT001.CR2, and will launch the external
RAW editor on that symbolic link. So when you save as a JPEG, you'll
end up with PHOT001_EXT.JPG, which is separate from the paired
PHOT001.JPEG. Using the context menu in Shotwell, you'll be able to
switch between the paired and external renderings.
That's the general plan. We're still not sure whether we'll be able to
implement all of 1-4 above for 0.11, but we're going to try. For more
details or to follow further progress, see the Trac ticket which tracks
this project:
http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/3730
adam
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