Introducing dlRaw

FYI: dlRaw the new open source raw developer

Over the last years I've processed several hundreds of pictures with ufraw and Gimp. And it was a nice time, they worked nearly flawlessly. After getting the basics in image manipulation I started to program my first scripts in Gimp using Scheme... So, after a short while I could use highpass sharpening, vignetting, local contrast, shadow recovery and crossprocessing with a few clicks... But it didn't take long until I realized the drawbacks of 8 bit processing.

Alternatives are rare in the open source world and none of them matched my needs. Then, earlier this year I was looking for background information on lensfun, and I saw Jos in one forum talking about his new project dlRaw... After a bit of testing and asking for some improvements I started looking at the code myself, and that's how it started...

Today I want to offer the code of my development version of dlRaw. Because we're both working on it in our spare time, there was not yet enough time to put all my code into the SVN tree, but this will happen in the near future.

Right now dlRaw has reached the point where it can produce great images. But until a final version there’s still lots of testing and coding to do. That’s why we need you, the open source imaging community! Try dlRaw and tell us what you think. We appreciate any feedback and any help you can give us.

dlRaw is a raw processor, like ufraw or dcraw. It features raw demosaicing with dcraw and several filters for image processing including some filters which are usually used in Gimp, but here they work on 16 bit linear data which helps to achieve better results. Some buzz words:

• 16 bit color depth.
• Color managed.
• Geometric corrections: rotation, scaling, cropping.
• Exposure, contrast and saturation.
• Shadow and highlight recovery.
• Local contrast.
• Curves, RGB, R, G, B, LAB, L, A, B.
• Wavelet and GreyCStoration denoising.
• Refocus, USM and Highpass sharpening.
• Toning.
• Vignetting.
• Gradual overlay (like Cokin gradual filters).
• Lossless Gimp export with exiv data.
• Platform independent since it relies on QT4.

Right now dlRaw is only available as source code. At least on Linux it’s quite easy to complie yourself though! You can get the latest revision from the SVN repository on SourceForge; however the older revision 139 (also available in the repository) is more clean, as Jos is revamping the code for more flexibility at the moment. Or you try my preview version, which showcases some of the upcoming features. See the dlRaw preview section of this blog to get it.

Please keep in mind it's a development version, it's not very optimized at the moment, has little multithreadening and no installation routine. We're working on it. But you'll see, it's already fun to use.

Documentation can be found at the dlRaw homepage and will follow on this blog. Feel free to post your bugs, wishes or ideas in the comments of this post or at SourceForge.

greets mike