[Tig] where.. neutral review RED?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008, Rob Lingelbach wrote:
>
> do you think the Cinepaint developers (Robin Rowe) are working on this, or is 
> it an impossibility without reverse-engineering the format involving great 
> effort?

I don't think that the Cinepaint developers are involved with 
developing support for RAW formats.  The original open source solution 
for raw formats is Dave Coffin's 'dcraw' at 
"http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/".  His small source module 
somehow manages to support hundreds of DSLR cameras with excellent 
results.  The film "Corpse Bride" (claymation) used dcraw to convert 
the hundreds of thousands of high-grade DSLR photos into a workable DI 
format. There is a related project ("UFRaw") which incorporates dcraw 
into a more sophisticated interface.

> Is being locked-in to using their software a bad thing?  I expect so.  It

Yes, of course.  It is a very bad thing.  If RED goes out of business 
or loses interest then those who purchased the cameras could be left 
in the lurch.  Also, the ability to use any kind of OS and any kind of 
computer combined with any popular scripting/programming capability 
would make the format much easier to use and easier to adapt to any 
work-flow.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/