Estoy subscrito a la fenomenal lista de correo de Tim Grey y hoy me he cruzado con una pregunta de alguien q acaba de comprar la Nikon D2X y q se pregunta q software usar para convertir los RAWS. En la respuesta Tim Grey nombra a San Thomas Knoll y dice q Adobe no soportará los RAWS d esta cámara xq aparentemente Nikon ha encriptado la información referente al balance de blancos y romper ese encriptado (cosa q ya ha hecho otro monstruo de los RAWS Dave Coffin creador del DCRaw) significaría violar el copyright de Nikon. Si esto es así me parece alucinante q Nikon se cierre a q sus usuarios usen el software q es de facto, el estándar de manipulación digital de imágenes no?
Os pongo la pregunta entera:
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"I have just purchased a Nikon D2X and am trying to decide between Nikon Capture, Phase One Capture One Pro (your article in Jan/Feb 05 Digital Photo Pro), and simply waiting until Adobe camera raw file support is available for the D2X. Are there significant advantages or disadvantages with any of the three approaches?
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Well, this is suddenly a much more interesting question than you probably expected. There's been considerable discussion on the Web over the past day or two, with Thomas Knoll of Adobe indicating that Photoshop's Camera Raw will not support the D2X NEF RAW format because Nikon has apparently encrypted the white balance information within the file. The concern is that decrypting this information within the file would represent a violation of the intellectual property owned by Nikon in the way of the NEF file specification. We'll see how that plays out. This may affect the broader support for the D2X file format, although Dave Coffin of DCRaw fame has already cracked the encryption of the D2X NEF format, and will support this format in his library. However, I'll address the more general terms of your question that affect all camera models.
The basic question is whether you opt for the camera manufacturer software, the Phase One software, or Camera Raw. Of course, there are a variety of other options, but these are the major options being used by most users right now. The advantage of the camera software is that it tends to provide better quality, presumably because the camera manufacturer has a better understanding of what goes into the RAW file, and therefore can convert it more effectively. You'll often see slightly better shadow detail and slightly lower noise levels when using the software from the camera manufacturer. The disadvantage is that this tends to be the solution with the slowest processing time.
The C1Pro software from Phase One (
www.phaseone.com) is excellent in terms of image quality, in most cases matching the quality you can expect from the camera manufacturers' software. It also provides an excellent workflow model that makes it easy to process a large number of images relatively quickly and efficiently. This is the software I recommend for those photographers who need to process a relatively large number of images with different settings for each image.
Finally, Camera Raw in Photoshop provides a fast and convenient solution. It is very fast at converting the files, and it is convenient because it is built into Photoshop. All you need to do is open a RAW file and you get the dialog box, rather than using special software before moving on to the optimization process in Photoshop. The potential downside is image quality, but I've really not seen this to be a significant issue. In some cases Camera Raw actually does better than the other options, though admittedly in most cases it provides slightly reduced shadow detail and slightly higher noise. I consider Camera Raw to be the most convenient option when you are generally working with one file at a time rather than batch processing with different settings for each image.
The bottom line is that there is no one right answer for everyone. I happen to prefer the convenience advantages of Camera Raw, and use that for my RAW conversion. However, many photographers have chosen different options, and those options make sense for them. I would suggest you make your decision based on the relative pros and cons related to your particular workflow needs."