Don't you hate how long it takes for your computer to import RAW photos?
The de-facto program to convert RAW files to other formats, dcraw, by Dave Coffin, gives great-quality images ... slowly.
Dcraw's author refuses to turn dcraw into a library, saying: "Library code is ugly because it cannot use global variables. Libraries are more difficult to modify, build, install, and test than standalone programs." Those are bold statements, and I disagree with all of them.
A couple of alternatives have come up. libraw is a library built by running a Perl script on dcraw code. It presents a couple of speed-ups and allows multi-threading, but the final output's interface is icky because dcraw's is. libopenraw is very well documented library and has a much nicer interface, but it's slow and all it does for now is thumbnails.
That's where my new project, refinery, fits in. It's brand-new, so it doesn't do much. Here's what sets it apart:
- Refinery is twice as fast as dcraw and can produce the exact same output. On a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, dcraw can take 36 seconds to process 10 photographs. Libraw takes 25 using threads. Refinery takes 18 using threads.
- Refinery doesn't handle metadata. Use Exiv2, which refinery depends on, for that. (As it turns out, most popular RAW-refining software that depends on dcraw or libraw depends on Exiv2 anyway.)
- Refinery doesn't extract thumbnails. Cameras store thumbnails as metadata, so you should use Exiv2 to extract thumbnails.
- Refinery grants access to image data from any step in the image-processing pipeline. For instance, users can access the camera's raw sensor data.
- Refinery is unit-tested. Unit tests are small, fast and precise, so developers don't need to process dozens of test RAW files every time they tweak the code.
At the time I write this, refinery can only read Nikon D5000 .NEF files and PPM files. It's not difficult to support every camera dcraw supports: it just takes some time and understanding to adopt dcraw's code. The intricacies of each camera are buried in uncommented if-statements within dcraw. Refinery uses an object-oriented approach to put each camera's traits into understandable classes.
The one thing going against refinery is that I don't want to maintain it. I prefer photojournalism: I just want to import my photographs more quickly.
I'm making refinery as open and accessible as possible, so others will take it up. Check out the code and submit issues at refinery's GitHub repository and read more at the refinery project page.