Posts Tagged ‘convert’
Convert RAW Files to DNG with DNGConverter
digiKam comes with a nifty batch utility that allows you to convert RAW files to the DNG format. The question is, of course, why you would want to do that. After all, digiKam can handle RAW files without any problem, so what’s the point of adding one more step to your photographic workflow?
As you might know, RAW is not a file format, but rather an umbrella term that describes multiple file formats controlled by multiple hardware manufacturers. The RAW formats themselves are specific to digital camera manufacturers. For example, Canon cameras store RAW files in the CR2 format, while Nikon cameras use the NEF format. Besides being proprietary, RAW formats are often poorly documented and encumbered by patents.
The Digital Negative (DNG) format introduced by Adobe Systems, Inc in 2004 is designed to overcome these shortcomings by providing an open, well-documented universal format for storing RAW files. If you would like to know more about the DNG format, the DNG articles and links Web site provides a wealth of valuable information on the topic.
Being an open and well-documented format, DNG is suited particularly well for long-term archiving of digital photos. Of course, the CR2 and NEF and other RAW formats are widely adopted and supported, so they are not going away anytime soon. But there is no reason why you shouldn’t save your RAW files in the DNG format to be on the safe side. After all, storage is cheap nowadays, and the DNGConverter utility makes it supremely easy to convert RAW files to the DNG format.
Using DNGConverter couldn’t be easier. Launch the utility, add the RAW files, specify a few options, and hit the Convert button. For complete peace of mind, you might want to enable the Embed Original File option which embeds the source RAW file into the resulting DNG file.
Batch Convert Nikon RAW (NEF) Files to JPEG
Need to convert multiple .NEF files to the JPEG format? You can easily do this from the command line using the UFRaw tool. First off, install the UFRaw package on your system. UFRaw is available in the software repositories of many popular Linux distributions, so you can install it using your distro’s package manager. On Ubuntu, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install ufraw
Launch then the terminal, switch to the directory containing NEF files, and run the following command:
ufraw-batch --out-type=jpeg --out-path=./jpg ./*.NEF
That’s all there is to it.
