Libraw now supports R5 Mark II in beta

[Donatzsky (Nis Donatzsky)]

@Tamas_Papp

I fail to understand why major camera manufacturers don’t just publish a white paper with each iteration of their raw formats, at least the part that is sufficient to decode the images.

Here’s Nikon’s reasoning when they tried to encrypt the white balance metadata in NEF files:

As a proprietary format, Nikon secures NEF’s structure and processing through various technologies. Securing this structure is intended for the photographer’s benefit, and dedicated to ensuring faithful reproduction of the photographer’s creative intentions through consistent performance and rendition of the images.

Source (it’s a masterclass in corporate PR doublespeak): https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4680236981/nikonnefresponse
Adobe forum post: PhotoshopNews: Photoshop News and Information » Archive » Nikon encrypts D2X white balance metadata

@Tamas_Papp

Yes, maybe it has some proprietary magic secret sauce they want to keep secret, but that is not possible or practical, as their competition has the resources to reverse engineer it easily.

For plain uncompressed raws it is indeed baffling, but they might be hoping to make some cash by creating licensing deals with Capture One, Adobe et al. For the compressed formats, the algorithms are in some cases licensed from third-parties or even patented, so they couldn’t release the specification if they wanted to.