Digital photography is rapidly replacing film photography, and the digital equivalent of the film negative is what's called the Raw file. The Raw file is basically what the CCD or CMOS sensor saw plus various internal configuration data for the camera, like what exposure it used, what white balance was selected, and other stuff. Cheap digital cameras don't usually output Raw files - they just make JPEGs - but more serious cameras such as the digital SLRs made by Nikon and Canon do, and the raw file is the image data file of choice for most serious or professional photographers.

Now that you know what a raw file is, here's the problem: I cannot find any utilities or programs which run under Linux that can read and process a Nikon Raw (.NEF) file.

Nikon supplies software for Windows and Mac's to read them. And Photoshop has plug-ins for Raw files. And there are several shareware products for Windows that can process them. But I can't find any for Linux.

Linux has an image editing progrm called GIMP, which isn't really in the same league as a professional tool like Photoshop CS, although it gives Photoshop Elements and Paintshop Pro a run for their money. But it only knows about formats like TIFF, JPEG, etc.

Suggestions?

came up with these three links in 5 google minutes including a plugin or two for gimp

http://www.aamot.org/ole/photography...et-raw-formats

http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

http://ptj.rozeta.com.pl/Soft/RawPhoto

i'm sure there are more
if you know alot about these formats work with the developers cause this junk isn't standardized so they are stuck with reverse enginering...

it's easy for the company to support this stuff with drivers while we don't cause they are the only ones in most instances who
know what the secret propriatary format is !

There's a lot of third-party stuff for these in Windows, including in commercial software like Photoshop. So the formats can't be THAT secret.

Anyway, all of the links above, as well as the ones I've found on my own Googling, are really just works in progress and kitrchen sink experiments. They're full of all kinds of caveats, and lists of stuff that's not fully supported, and pleas for more information and discoveries about the underlying data format, etc.

Raw format is not used by casual snapshooters; it's for advanced photographers and professionals. If I'm paying for a model, and a hair stylist and a make-up artist, I can't afford to entrust the images I get to code that's still "stuggling to do color handling corectly" (quoting one of the above links.)

This illustrates why Linux is still struggling to escape the Geek Ghetto. Both Linux and Windows are engaged in a conspiracy to lower people's expectations. Windows lowers their expectations that computers shouldn't crash all the time ("sure XP crashes several times a day, but I just save my files a lot and reboot! What the big deal?") Linux lowers their expectations that applications should actually be fully functional and professional quality ("Sure it only does black and white today but I'm sure by the next release he'll support color and meanwhile, in between clients, I'm teaching myself C++ and vi so I can write my own ICM plugins for it...")

My SuSE 9.2 DVD came with DCRAW and Rawphoto 0.7. Basically all I have to do is run the Gimp 2.0 to view my NEF format files from the Nikon 8700.

I managed to get photoshop 7 and Elements 2 to run with crossover office 4, but so far cannot get Elements 3 (with raw support) to work. Seems to be to intergrated with windows. It ships with DX9, so I think i'm stuffed there.

Anyway with the Gimp 2.0 working fine who cares!