K10D Raw and dcRAW

For all those hackers out there...

Dave Coffin's dcRAW now supports the K10D
http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

You may be aware that dcRAW forms the core of many RAW processing software - so hopefully in the next release of all these tools the new PEF should be supported

It's interesting to see the encoding used for compression (look for pentax_k10_load_raw in the source).

Incidentally, the reason I checked this was because I was just testing the HDRI software from here: http://www.fdrtools.com/fdrtools_advanced_e.php - using the 5 frame, 2 stop interval of the K10D produces a nice set of images suitable for HDRI. Unfortunately the DNG file didn't work in it (there's a little comment in dcRAW that mentions perhaps an oddity of the K10D DNG). But, I tried it on JPG and the result was quite amazing... more stuff on that on another thread.

Excuse my whittering and babbling....

Matt

great news! this means all us Linux geeks should soon be able to run our favourite linux RAW converters with the K10D files.

Bibble is the first up
http://www.ephotozine.com/news/fullnews.cfm?NewsID=3614

Hi,

this uses dcraw, but as yet doesn't support the K10D PEF, although it supports DNG..

http://www.rawtherapee.com/index.html

I've just downloaded it, but haven't had a chance to play with it yet. I'll do that later, and let you know the results. There are both Linix and Windows versions.. and it's free.

Matt,

it says it does a couple of things differently to other mainstream converters,

http://www.rawtherapee.com/usman.html

colour boost for example, using the CIELAB colour space as opposed to the RGB cs. I have no idea what they're on about though.

I was looking around for a new Linux/Open Source RAW app, as my RSE 2006 keeps crashing for some reason, even after reinstalling it a couple of times. Perhaps it had some obsolescence written into it, for when Lightroom was launched.

Cheers

Liam

Liam,
Thanks for the link As they are using dcRAW - just drop them a line and they should be able to recompile using the new library

CIELab is like this:
We're used to images in RGB - Red, Green, Blue.
Lab is Lightness, a colour, b colour.

The advantage of Lab mode is that adjusting contrast, sharpening etc can all be done on the "L" channel without affecting the colour at all.
Likewise, you can clean up the "a" and "b" channels without affecting the luminosity content.

Photoshop includes editing for Lab mode Just Google for "Lab mode sharpening". One of the tricks I've seen is to apply curves to the "a" and "b" channels and you get a Velvia look really easily...
...however, easier still is adding a Brightness/Contrast layer, upping the contrast, and changing the layer mode to "Color" in Photoshop - does the same thing internally without changing the image's mode.

Lesson over
Matt

Adobe Camera RAW and pretty much any processor that can handle DNG can take RAW files straight out of the camera, if you use DNG instead of PEF.

This is encouraging. With all the photo mags being full of Nikon, Canon and bloody Photoshop, it's nice to see some others using Pentax DSLRs with Linux.

I aim to get a K10D in a couple of weeks and I'll be very interested to see how the RAW tools cope with the new format.

Firstly, Hi lenscape, and welcome to the forum.

I use GIMP, GIMPshop and occasionaly UFraw, although the release I have doesn't have an image gallery feature, which I'd find useful.

Well I tried it on my machine (AMD 2600+, 512mb ram, 256mb Ati Radeon 9600 graphics card) and it's sooooo slowwwwwwwww. I know my machine isn't the fastest in the world, but as a review, I'd have to say that at it's current level of development, it' pretty much unusable, for more than the odd individual image. Perhaps someone with a very high end machine could put it through it's paces, and see if it'll work as intended.

I've just downloaded SilkyPix 3 to try. Hopefully it's better than the replacement for the Pentax Studio update, which to be honest, I don't understand...

Cheers

Liam