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Linux + CHDK + Bibble

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ShockValue

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Hi everyone. Currently I am using the CHDK firmware for my Canon A640 to produce RAW files. Unfortunatly Bibble does not support this version of the RAW format (and according to the forums, won't anytime soon.) So I am looking for opinions on the best way to deal with this glitch in my current setup.

Is there a utility that can convert my current RAW from the A640 to a different kind of RAW that Bibble can read? Or would I be better off converting to a different format all together? I'm very interested in keeping as much data (or all, if possible) when working with my files, and is one of the reasons I enjoy these non-destructive types of image manipulation tools.

Is TIF or PPM the way to go? I know dcraw can convert to these formats, but is this really what I want to do, or is there a better way?

Thanks for your advice -
 
Which Linux distro are you running under?

There are many raw converters that uses some or all of Dave Coffin's dcraw.c code, while adding loads of features, and different output formats.

So, you're not limited to the command line version of dcraw.c to convert your images.

The trick is finding a converter that is based on a version of dcraw.c that is new enough to directly support the raw files from your camera model.

For example, newer versions (0.9.2) of digiKam (a really good Image Management Application for Linux) have their own library built in now that's based on dcraw.c. So, it may support your camera (I'm not sure exactly when Dave added it to dcraw.c).

You can see some of it's features here:

http://www.digikam.org/?q=about/features09x

But, not all Linux distros have the latest versions of it.

UFRaw also bases it's raw conversion on Dave's code. So, cameras that dcraw.c support are supported in UFRaw (provided the version you use is current). A new version was just released:

http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

Krita (part of the KDE Office Suite) also uses dcraw.c to peform raw conversion.

http://www.koffice.org/krita/

Most linux distros are a bit behind on the dcraw.c version included in them. But, it's pretty easy to compile it yourself.

Another app to look at is Raw Therapee. I see the A640 listed under Supported Cameras:

http://www.rawtherapee.com/

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
Hi, thanks for the reply.

I currently use Gentoo linux, so most of my packages are pretty up to date. I was playing with dcraw today, and I see that the current version that Gentoo uses is v0.11, so it doesn't support the A640, but I'm sure the 0.12 version will be along shortly.

Assuming I pick dcraw or one of the many programs that use it's engine, what format should I be looking to convert too that keeps as much data as possible? I see dcraw can do TIFF PPM or JPEG (I know I don't want JPEG)
 
That's probably some kind of internal Gentoo version number, or some kind of revision number for it.

The current version of dcraw.c is 8.77

If you type dcraw from a console with no parameters, you'll see the version at the top of the screen that comes up.

My suggestion, just download the current source and compile it if you want to give it a whirl.

Here's a link to it:

http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

Then, open a console (as root), navigate to the folder you have it in and compile it like this:

su
gcc -o dcraw -O4 dcraw.c -lm -DNO_JPEG -DNO_LCMS

Then, copy the dcraw it creates to the folder that the existing dcraw program is in overwriting the one that you have). It's probably in someplace like usr/bin

As for the output format to use, that's up to you. I typically use digiKam instead of dcraw.c from command line, and I just use a jpeg output after making any tweaks for the conversion, keeping the original EXIF. The stand alone doesn't do that for you. Although if it's an image you plan on manipulating a lot outside of the raw conversion process, you may want to use something like tiff.

You may also want to download the latest UFRaw and Raw Therapee I mentioned. They'll have nice sliders for the parameters, preview screens, etc.

When I do use dcraw from command line, I usually just keep the default .ppm output, using the camera's white balance as a starting point with the -w parameter. You'd need the correct extension for your raw files (whatever that hack makes them). The raw files from my KM 5D are .mrw files (and this extension will vary by camera model). You can pass more than one file to it at a time, too.

dcraw -w rawfile1.mrw rawfile2.mrw rawfile3.mrw

Note that Dave also has some new parameters like wavelet based noise reduction now. The latest digiKam supports those features via sliders.

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
Thanks for all your help so far! Yes I got my version numbers mixed up. What I meant was that the latest version of ufraw was 0.11 in Gentoo. DCraw in gentoo is 8.73. So i went ahead and downloaded 0.12 of ufraw and got that installed. It worked just fine converting all my CRW (canon raw) files to tif or ppm.

The problem now is that i just discovered that Bibble wont read tif or ppm files. It only supports outputting them.

Perhpaps I'm barking up the wrong tree with Bibble? I just really enjoyed it's noise reduction and other features. I wonder if it's possible to convert to a different RAW instead of tif or ppm.
 
Your post made me curious, so I looked up the supported raw formats in both ACDSee Pro 2 Beta and in Lightroom V1.1 (I know they don't have Linux versions). But the A640 is not supported by either one. And I suspect they probably have the most current and up to date raw profiles possible. At least they are sort of up to date. 'Current-ish' if you will.

I mean if they still support the Canon G1 and the Contax N Digital, just how obscure can raw from the A640 be to not be included? This may not be an issue so much as your choice of software, as it is your choice of camera.

--
STOP Global Stasis! Change is good!

Now that you've judged the quality of my typing, take a look at my photos. . .
http://www.photo.net/photos/GlenBarrington
 
Glen Barrington said:
Your post made me curious, so I looked up the supported raw formats
in both ACDSee Pro 2 Beta and in Lightroom V1.1 (I know they don't
have Linux versions). But the A640 is not supported by either one.
And I suspect they probably have the most current and up to date raw
profiles possible. At least they are sort of up to date.
'Current-ish' if you will.
Click to expand...
Other way around Glen. dcraw.c has the most current and up to date support for raw formats (currently supporting over over 280 cameras).

Those guys support less than 200.

Dave tries to include all new cameras (send him files from a new camera and if it's not supported, he adds it, often within 24 hours). He prefers images of a color chart in daylight using different white balance settings if possible. That way, if a manufacturer encrypts part of the file, it's easier to crack. For example, Nikon encrypts metadata related to White Balance in .nef files from newer models.

Some other software manufacturers are not going to go out of their way to support cameras unless the users are likely to buy their product because of it. So, yes, a cameras popularity does have a bit to do with it.

Dave Coffin (the author of dcraw.c) reverse engineers the raw formats from new camera models and publishes his ANSI C source code.

So, other software manufacturers can use Dave's published code as a guide for adding new camera models. Dave does the work, they benefit from it by using his published source code for documentation of the raw formats.

Many software companies make use of Dave's code. See the "Other Raw Decoders" section of his web site

http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
With Lightroom there is also the ability to convert to DNG and import the files that way. While I was testing out Lightroom, that's how I had to do it since it didn't directly support the A640 RAW format either.

I'm not particularly surprised that Bibble or Lightroom don't support the A640 RAW format since technically the A640 doesn't even output in that format to start with. It took a clever after-market hack and some hard work by other people to get it to do so.

I'm just a bit bummed that I've hit a roadblock that won't allow me to manipulate my RAW files somehow that I can get them to work in Linux+Bibble like I could in Windows+Lightroom.
 
Not all converters are going to support all formats. It takes work on the part of the developers to support a new format, and they have to decide the best way to spend their time.

Dave Coffin did a very major rewrite of dcraw.c in order to support DNG. Eric does not base his code on Dave's, and it would probably be an awful lot of work to support it. I'm sure he's aware of interest in it.

In the interim, I'd send a note to Eric Hyman (founder of Bibble Labs) and let him know you'd like to see support for your camera directly (that way, you wouldn't need to convert to dng first). If enough people are interested in seeing it supported, I'm sure he'll consider it.

In the interim, you've got other options.

Id' make sure to check out DigiKam (free). It's got a pretty good user interface, and I find myself preferring it's tools to some of the better known image editing applications for simple taks (USM, etc.). You'll also find it available in the repositories for most Linux distributions that use KDE. The newest versions of it use a separate library called libkdcraw that's based on dcraw.c. The version in it may not support your camera yet (digiKam 0.92 uses dcraw.c version 8.60).

But, it will as time passes (they use newer versions of dcraw.c to make this library with every new release). digiKam 0.9.3 should go final in September.

There are also instructions on their web site for compiling it with the latest dcraw.c if you don't want to wait until a newer version comes out (but, you'd need to download all of the dependencies needed for digiKam, too).

http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/extragear/libs/libkdcraw/dcraw/README?pathrev=635195

It's got loads of nice features (and even if you use another raw converter, you could still use it for image management and basic editing tasks). It would probably work with dng files as is with the older library based on dcraw.c 8.60 anyway. Try it and see. But, the next version should support raw files from your camera directly (since dcraw.c now does).

http://www.digikam.org/?q=about/features09x

The free Krita is moving along nicely. It uses the dcraw.c engine for raw conversion.

It's part of the free KOffice suite, and a number of improvements were made to newer versions of Krita. Krita supports 16 bit editing, raw conversion, layers, color management and more.

http://www.koffice.org/krita/

Yet another product worth looking at is Lightzone. It's user interface takes some getting used to. But, it's starting to grow on me a bit.

The Windows and Mac version of it are $149.95 or $249.95, depending on the version:

http://www.lightcrafts.com/index.php

They offer it free for Linux users (no support though, as you'd expect since they are kind enough to make it available for free to Linux users). It supports dng

http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts/

A lot of Linux users like Cinepaint for image editing. It's a GIMP "fork" (most code oritinally based on the Gimp) and supports editing in 16 bit mode. It's free.

http://www.cinepaint.org/

You can also get a number of Windows image editors to run under Linux via Wine (a free product that lets Windows apps run in Linux). For example, the FastStone Image Viewer runs under Wine.

You can install Picasa in Linux now, too (although it's not native to Linux):

http://picasa.google.com/linux/

Check out Raw Therapee, too. It supports your camera directly now:

http://www.rawtherapee.com/

There are more out there. These are just some of ones I've installed before.

--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
 
ShockValue said:
I'm not particularly surprised that Bibble or Lightroom don't support
the A640 RAW format since technically the A640 doesn't even output in
that format to start with. It took a clever after-market hack and
some hard work by other people to get it to do so.
Click to expand...
At Bibble we profile all of the cameras we support for both color and noise characteristics and there are a number of things that we tune for specific cameras, e.g. the highlight recovery threshold. Even if you could get your hacked file into a format Bibble could read, I don't think it would give you much more than you can get from the JPEG (unless the camera writes a really severely compressed JPEG, or the A640 hardware characteristics are identical to a camera we already support).

I of course realize that having someone tell you that and actually seeing it for yourself are two very different things. I wish I had time to fiddle with it, but we're just buried right now.

-Colleen
http://www.bibblelabs.com/
 
Hi Colleen, thanks for your reply. What you say about camera profiling makes sense.

I'll keep my eye on Bibble, but I guess will explore other possibilities for now. And a big thank you for developing this great product on multiple platforms (I'm a linux user.)

You guys want to borrow my A640 for a couple weeks? :)
 
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