I think it's only appropriate we bring Andreas Huggel, the author of exiv2 (www.exiv2.org) into this discussion as well. While exiv2 is a C++ library, based on messages that have come through on the exiv2 yahoo group I believe it has successfully been used already in at least one C# project, see: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/exiv2/message/152
Andreas, we're all discussing the problems with dealing with RAW image and metadata, the lack of a common open source library for handling these tasks, and what to do about it. We really need a mailing list or newgroup so the information in these emails is not lost to additional participants that keep getting pulled into this discussing... -------------------------------------------------------- Will Stokes wstokes (at) gmail.com Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net -------------------------------------------------------- On 3/16/06, Larry Ewing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think I'll jump in here an introduce myself. I'm the lead developer > for F-Spot (see f-spot.org). As was already mentioned it has some > limited RAW browsing support now, with plans to expand that in the > future. > > On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 23:41 +0100, Udi Fuchs wrote: > > I am amazed at the interest that is shown here for raw image > > processing. I've being working for over a year now on UFRaw. There are > > a few people that contribute some code, but most of the work I do by > > myself in my free time. > > > > I think there has been a lot of work done on the various RAW formats and > processing in separate projects and probably too little communication. > Hopefully we can turn this around a bit. One step we could start with > is dumping some of our combined knowledge about raw formats and raw > metadata somewhere public. I'm sure we all of know a little bit about > various aspects of the problem space that would be good to share. > > On the metadata side F-Spot has custom some custom code to read > jpeg/tiff/png/iptc/XMP metadata as well as partial support for several > other non tiff based raw formats. The metadata writing support is much > farther behind right now but coming along. Exiv2 looks very nice but > would be very difficult for me to use because of c#->c++ invoking issues > on mono. Given that it is probably unlikely that everything can > standardize on using it, but on the positive side reading and writing > complex file formats is something where free software a whole probably > benefits in having more than one implementation, at least until we shake > out the bugs. > > > I think that some people here are under estimating the complexity of > > raw conversion. It is no rocket science, but it is more complicated > > than just running dcraw. dcraw is responsible for decrypting the raw > > information and gives some basic conversion option, but you need a > > tool like UFRaw to fully control the conversion of the raw image to an > > RGB image that could be later handled by standard programs like the > > Gimp. > > The ufraw conversion code is very interesting, I'd love to talk to you > about it sometime. > > > If one of the above suggested libraries has a design document I would > > be glad to comment on it. It would be great if UFRaw could use such a > > library. > > > > You are also welcome to join UFRaw's development. At the moment > > UFRaw's internal API cannot be exported as a library, but it could > > reach this point with enough work. We (Neils Bech who helps in UFRaw's > > development and I) have the best experience in maintaining code, which > > is updated regularly with dcraw. > > > > I think that UFRaw's code is a good basis for developing a library and > > in general for standardizing the raw work flow. > > > > The code is definitely a good start from moving away from using dcraw > via pipes. > > --Larry > > _______________________________________________ CREATE mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create
