R5 Mark II RAW support - Almost a year later

Processing
,
21

Its about an arbitrary decision that is damaging to them, the apps that use LibRaw and the community in general.

22

We are behind a different project. If RawSpeed supported CR3, then we wouldn’t use LibRaw at all. LibRaw was a last ditch effort to get CR3 support. If rawspeed in rust supports CR3, then LibRaw will go away, I’m sure.

5 Likes
23

Software like darktable will need to adapt and support new libraries or it’ll lose users.

It’s easy to tell the user to “contribute” when in this particular case for example, he can’t. LibRaw doesn’t accept contributions and has a super slow release cycle. What can the user do even if he wants to contribute? Nothing.

Imo it’s also not a good idea to support libraries which are slow and against user contributions, if better ones are available.

Non technical users also can’t contribute, and can’t donate in darktable’s case, because dt doesn’t accept donations, what can he do then? He can use proprietary software that supports his new camera :slight_smile:

1 Like
24

Out of curiosity, rawspeed in rust will be only one going forward? I saw that it is under darktable-org in github

25

So many times I have heard people say, it is open source for the community. We do not compete with commercial software. Your response is similar to mine. You are 100% correct. My issue is with Linux. I have few options running Linux. I do love darktable. I hate how RAW support is handled.

2 Likes
26

you hate that devs do have to reverse engineer the formats as there is no official documentation how to implement them. and many devs do that in their spare time.

no dev owes you anything.

6 Likes
27

You miss the point about how LibRaw has treated contributors. Or the fact that they had a working version as far back as Feb. I understand your concerns. You are not appreciating the how poorly the process is being implemented

1 Like
28

That seems to be Roman’s idea so far, but only time will tell.

1 Like
29

We do. And LibRaw is a last resort. If someone else can figure out CR3 in another library, then let’s get that in darktable. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of interest in doing the actual work, there is only interest in the working getting done.

6 Likes
30

I partially blame Canon. They say they do not want to open their RAW format for use by other camera manufactures. I don’t understand why they can’t issue a limited license for RAW processing with photography applications. With specific notice to camera manufactures specifying they do not have the license to use in a camera.

1 Like
31

This is good news in my opinion. With so many rust raw decoders going on at the moment and their respectively open licenses, we might see a lot cross-contribution going on and hopefully faster support.

I didn’t look at libraw’s license, but given that their cr3 support wasn’t pulled into rawspeed, I assume it’s some license that prevents it?

32

oh you can get all that information probably … for an NDA and so on. nothing that would work well in the opensource context.

2 Likes
33

Codecs and protocols are one of the worst proprietary pieces of software I can imagine. There is no other word for it than greed.

AMD still doesn’t have HDMI > 2.0 support on linux because of HDMI’s proprietary implementations that can’t be present in open source code.

At least there’s some hope in the world. MIDI is still going strong and just shows what can be achieved with open cooperation.

A fully open RAW format would be great. DNG is okay but not really open

34

Not necessarily as there are other bits and pieces that were borrowed and rewritten (in both directions I guess; you can see copyright credits to LibRaw in rawspeed code for example).

How so? It’s fully open/public IMHO, just that Adobe still owns it (and calls most if not all the shots, so one could perhaps say not really free/libre).

1 Like
35

Let’s think a moment about why open source software was conceived.

Richard Stallman used an HP printer in his job. He devised and implemented a driver to perform a specific network task that he needed to use. He was not selfish, and he thought that all HP users could benefit from it, so he offered the code to HP free-of-charge. What was HP’s response? Not only did they not implement his improvement, they added protection to the printer’s firmware to prevent Stallman or anyone else from being able to modify the driver. (I am sure that it will be easy to find better descriptions of this from other sources, but that is how I understand the story.)

This pissed off Stallman, and he devised and started the free software movement. It is basically the same as the “right to repair” movement that affects so many products to this day. You think you are buying an article, but in reality, you are only paying for the ability to use it under the manufacturer’s terms.

6 Likes
36

In this context, feel free to blame them (and other camera manufacturers) to the full extent. They are the ones making it difficult to support new formats.

That said, the situation is unlikely to change until a significant amount camera buyers take FOSS raw support into consideration when picking a camera. So, from a practical perspective, it makes sense to ensure that your camera is supported before buying it.

4 Likes
37

have a look at Adding new camera support in darktable / LibRaw / ExifTool – Pandas Welt and then you can build darktable with that support.

If you‘re on macOS you might use these builds: darktable 5.2.0 for older macOS versions (10.14 & 11.3 and later) or current OSX Build - #857 by MStraeten

5 Likes
38

then there’s no cr3 support for darktable. rawspeed never merged cr3 support (Support for Canon CR3 raw files by cytrinox · Pull Request #271 · darktable-org/rawspeed · GitHub ) for even a longer time :wink:
So why blame libraw for something alternative raw engines also doesn’t support …

4 Likes
39

So I guess this means that it doesn’t make sense to buy any new Canon camera releases with the expectation of using them in darktable unless the files are converted to DNG or some other alternative format?

40

Correct.

3 Likes