Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Sorry if it has been said somewhere else but my search did not yield any conclusive answer

The way I am thinking of using Qimage is to directly open the RAW images, do some necessary adjustments and print.

so my question 1: is can I be guaranteed that the raw is NEVER altered in any way, shape or form. I see my raws as a digital negative and would never temper with it (which is why I immediately disqualified Nikon Capture for example)

Question 2: I own a Nikon D1X which I love, but this little bugger seems to have a very special way of handling it's raw files, it can be a 6MP or 10MP file depending on how the raw is developed. Some raw converters default to 6MP, some to 10MP and some give the option and the result is not the same, at all. In order to test this, is there a demo version which allows to open RAW files ?

thanks for your time

Didier

Hi Didier, welcome to the forum.
That is what I do with Canon CR2 files  :)
Absolutely guaranteed, Qimage stores the raw adjustments in a separate *.qrs file in the same folder as the image file.

I'm afraid there is not a demo version of the Studio edition with raw processing. I don't know if Mike Chaney will see this and answer for you but the alternative would be to e-mail me a file and I'll tell you what happens.
If this is something you would like to do, say so here and I'll send you forum message with my e-mail address.
Did you see there is a guide to raw processing with Qimage?
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage/qimage-raw-processing-a-guide/msg170/#msg170

Terry

Wow Terry, thanks for the offer, yes, if you're sure it's not too much of a bother I'd be glad to send you an image. The raw weights a bit less than 8 MB

thanks

Didier

For the record and information for other readers:
Ok Didier, I got your image, refined it in Q-SE and converted it to a jpeg and sent that to you.
The resolution was 4024x2648 pixels which is the full size of 10.6 M pixels  ;D

You can now buy Q-SE with confidence  ;)

Terry.

To the OP - just curious....what changes does Nikon Capture NX2 make to the original NEF file that you object to?

I was just about to ask the same question, having read this yesterday on the Nikon site:

Capture NX 2 is a full-featured non-destructive photo editing program that provides photographers powerful tools to quickly and easily edit their photographs.

I use NX2 as my main photo software. It doesn't change the original NEF in any way at all. It just adds edit steps which are completely reversible. The NEFs are never changed.

Mike

That is my impression as well. That's why I wondered why the OP "immediately disqualified" it. NX2 certainly has an excellent editing section once you learn it. And even after edits the original, unchanged NEF file is available. No offense to Mike, of course!

Nikon Capture doesn't change the raw data in the file, but it _does_ write the settings (and possibly history) to the NEF, and does update the thumbnail/preview in the NEF.  So while it isn't changing the actual raw data, it is changing the physical file.