Answered: How to convert compressed Fuji RAW files to uncompressed?

sluggy_warrior wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

Disk space is cheap. By compressing with an unknown process in which there is no available decompression resources available - then you are buying yourself problems. I've never found compressed raws worth the time or aggravation to mess with. It would have been nice if Fuji provided a S/W package to compress and/or uncompress their raws. But alas - S/W is not Fuji's long suit.

Agreed that disk space is cheap. But there's no disadvantage to compressed RAF format: no loss of data, RawSpeed library is free/open-source so decoding methods are known/published for both formats, CPU time difference is minimal. Even if Fuji drops software support completely now, both compressed and uncompressed RAFs are not locked in anymore.

The only downside of compressed is not every S/W package supports it and if one happens to want to use one of those or try one out - they they are screwed and have to find a work around.  `Compression is wonderful for a couple of things - like reducing size for electronic transmission or back in the old days of tape backup archive, e.g., TARball followed by a GZIP,  when disk spinning disk were the size of a dishwasher.  For electronic transmission, error correcting coding is required on the transmitted file so the number of bits transmitted is actually greater than that in the file.  Compressing the file will reduce the total package transmitted while minimizing the potential for transmission errors.

In general I do not compress image files since that insures the maximal compatibility  - now and going forward.

I shot a musical Mamma Miaat my daughter's school last week. It was 80GB on the card, and 21GB of RAF files in the end after culling and processing. Little things add up quickly, my 5TB USB drive has only 1.7TB left

At least we're not in the hot mess of Canon's CR3 format. While its specs are open/published, Canon doesn't clear a patent in the specs, thus, there's already implementation but it can't be used:

https://github.com/darktable-org/rawspeed/issues/121