If understanding RAW is still difficult after what I said before, take a look at the following images from photo.net.
The 3 most known RAW formats are CRW, CR2, NEF, and DNG. A few words on them:
The Canon RAW (CRW, CR2) File Format
Canon uses two different RAW formats, and some camera models produce CR2 instead of CRW files and other models can use bouth. The Canon CRW file format is type of RAW file format and It has a structure that is fundamentally similar to TIFF. CRW files are written in Camera Image File Format (CIFF).
For extremely detailed informations about the structure of a CRW see this article.
The Nikon RAW (NEF) File Format
Nikon RAW Format is known as Nikon Electronic Format (.NEF). Nikon offer their pro SLRs with PictureProject software that includes limited control over the RAW file conversion process, and then offer the more feature-rich Nikon Capture conversion software for an added cost. Nikon’s policy was to encrypt the white balance data in order to sell their software, so with other available programs the management of .nef files is limited. While Nikon Capture does indeed offer excellent capabilities for people to manipulate images saved in NEF formats, many photographers prefer Adobe Photoshop and from now on Adobe Lightroom.
The Adobe RAW (DNG) File Format
Adobe’s Digital NeGative format, indicated as .dng, is an open standard file format available to all, without secrecy, seeking to become the next overall universal format. A quote from OpenRaw: DNG is not an open standard in that it does not document all the essential information contained in current RAW format files like NEF and CR2. In many ways, DNG can be viewed as simply yet another RAW format with undocumented information - except that DNG has the added risk that information can be lost during conversion to/from DNG and other RAW formats.
Tags: raw, raw format, raw files, raw image, raw conversion, digital raw, raw formats, raw file, iphoto, picasa, microsoft digital image, openraw, dng, nef, cr2, crw
My Name is Lau, I'm 23 and I'm from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Nature Photography is my passion, and secondary, Abstract Photography, but other kind of photographic challenges please me as well.
February 24th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
[...] Now that you know what RAW is, let’s see some adjustments over a .nef file. Picasa is a free software from Google which I found useful and helpful in many photographic situations, but when it comes to RAW editing, it’s very basic. If you take a look at the first image down here, you’ll see that raw editing is split into 3 categories: Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects. Basic Fixes solves most of the editing necessities but is not flexible as Adobe Photoshop contrast, brightness, and curves: practically you only got Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Croping is useful and nicely done and Straighten is a function I really admire Google for the idea: it saves a lot of time compared to manually straighten that usually requires a lot of steps. [...]
June 11th, 2007 at 3:11 am
[...] Find out more about DNG and Adobe Camera Raw here. Download Adobe Camera Raw 4.1 here. [...]
September 9th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“The Nokia RAW (NEF)” don’t you mean The Nikon RAW (NEF)”!
September 9th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
GM - my bad
funny mistake, thx for pointing that out. Just fixed.
I really like Nokia and now they are building a factory in my town - must be in my subconscious