Idea to make RAW files stacking speed a lot faster

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crisc2000
Posts: 1
Joined: 22.08.2021 19:34

Idea to make RAW files stacking speed a lot faster

Post by crisc2000 »

As you know many users complain the focus stacking using RAW files is very slow compared to JPG/TIF files, because the image need to be converted from RAW to JPEG/TIFF before stacking. This process consumes a large amount of time.

I have a simple solution for this, give users a alternative option to use the embedded JPG file from RAW. Extracting embedded JPG is probably around 100 times faster then converting the RAW to JPG/TIF.
The result is not as high performance as converting RAW files (as some types of RAW files contain a smaller resolution JPEG), but it will allow previewing stacking results very fast (and help user decide).

Exiftool command line tool can be used to extract JPEG file embedded in RAW https://exiftool.org/. Or you could write the code in Helicon, here is a source code example for CR2 http://www.gdzid.com/QJFC.htm , exiftool is also opensource

Exiftool command lines examples:

extract the embeded JPEG in a RAW file (tested with CR2/Canon, ORF/Olympus, ARW/Sony):

Code: Select all

exiftool.exe -b -PreviewImage c:\source\IMG_05218.CR2 > c:\destination\IMG_05218_embeded.JPG
copy exif from the original RAW to a JPEG file:

Code: Select all

exiftool.exe -TagsFromFile c:\source\IMG_05218.CR2 c:\destination\IMG_05218_embeded.JPG -overwrite_original

Proposed Interface:
In "Raw development settings..." window, please add a checkbox "Preview Mode (This will use the JPEG file embedded in the raw file)". The checkbox state need to be remembered (after close/reopen program).
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