2.1 RAW images processing

PhotoFlow Wiki > User Manual > RAW images processing

The processing of RAW images is performed in two stages, associated to two independent tools:

1. the "RAW loader" tool performs the decoding of the RAW data and its conversion into 32-bits floating point values
2. the "RAW developer" tool processes the floating-point RAW data, applying the white balance, exposure compensation, demosaicing and color conversion steps

An existing RAW image can be opened by either passing the file name as a parameter when invoking photoflow from the command line, or by cliking on the "Open" button and selecting a RAW image from the file selector dialog.

The operation of opening the RAW file will most probably take several seconds, as the program will first decode the whole image into memory, save the decoded data into a disk buffer, and perform a first demosaicing to initialize the scaled-down versions of the full-res image for faster zooming. Once the loading is finished, you should see a very dark and dull version of the RAW image: this is because no post-processing is applied at this stage, and therefore the program shows you the original RAW values in linear colorspace.

In order to process the RAW image (white balance, demosaicing, exposure compensation, etc...) you need to add a "RAW Developer" layer on top of "RAW loader". To do that, click on the "+" button at the bottom of the layers list, select the "raw" tab in the tool selection dialog, and select the "RAW developer" tool: