WB encryption - adobe has a solution courtesy of Nikon!

[stubbsy]

A snippet of news on the Nikon WB encryption front and the PS CS problems. Text is from the RawMagick Beta discussion list:

What this means (so far) is that Nikon has added to their existing SDK (which performs the entire raw conversion as a black box) a new "mini-SDK", which has the sole function of reading the white balance parameters from a NEF file (while still allowing the host application to do its own raw conversion).

The upcoming Adobe Camera Raw 3.2 and DNG Converter 3.2 will use this Nikon "mini-SDK" to provide "as shot" white balance support for the Nikon D2X, D2Hs, and D50.

Edit: and here is the offical press release (same text was posted on both the Adobe & Nikon sites) - although reading it you'd never know what had happened.

[DaveB]

See, this is why the old threads need to be restored...

[stubbsy]

See, this is why the old threads need to be restored...

Was this posted previously Dave

[kipper]

Stubbsy there was a news item on DPReview this week in regards to Adobe and Nikon. They've agreed to work together with RAW files instead of competiting. Nikon have finally come to their senses and realise that it's best if they're more open about the format.

[DaveB]

Nikon have finally come to their senses and realise that it's best if they're more open about the format.

No - if they were at all open they would document the format. Instead they're providing a library (binary, I presume) for Adobe to use (one that's independent of the rest of the details of reading NEF files).

I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident there's an NDA (or at least a non-reverse-engineering clause in the licence) involved in this.
Open Source software (such as dcraw) still has to do its own thing (which it has been doing for a long time anyway, so it'd only be a problem if Nikon decided to go after people for decoding their file format without asking...)

What they have done is provide an "out" for this particular situation to allow Adobe to go forward (and thus let Nikon users use Adobe software unencumbered). I suspect this was a compromise within Nikon, trying to somehow maintain "control" over some intellectual property...
We'll just have to wait and see what happens in this realm in the future!

[kipper]

Oh no! You didn't really expect then to tell you the exact composite of the medium. Did Kodak, Fuji release the exact makeup of their negatives. No, and of course they wouldn't, as the way they do things might give them a competitive edge over the next company......remember the digital war is just beginning. RAW files are going to evolve as MP increase, the next hurdle is getting over the issue of space and the first company to come up with an innovative way to store for example a 32 or 64MP in a 1/4 or 1/8th of the size storage medium is going to be the winner. If they do this, would you think it'd be wise to have the structure of this format and how to encode/decode it floating about?

To me I see no problem with them releasing a library aslong as it's the exact same library (with coding examples) that they use in their own product (eg. Nikon Capture). If you can set exactly the same properties in both products and get exactly the same results with the library then I have no problem with this.....and I refer this as being open as you're going to get it.

[DaveB]

Darryl, in a moment I'm going to bow to one side and shut up (don't have the energy for this discussion right now - maybe I shouldn't have started!) but first:

Supplying code to read their files is fine, as long as they supply that code on a reasonable number of platforms. As someone who has spent a lot of their life (well, 15+ years before I got back into photography) on what is these days called Open Source Software and using computers and operating systems where the only software you have is the stuff you compile yourself, I feel that binary support of Windows and Mac only is not the best solution. Mind you, these days I'm a Mac user (it's Unix after all) so personally I can't complain in the short term.
A relevant point sometimes raised is what happens in 20 years when Nikon (or Adobe, or whoever) doesn't exist and those libraries don't run on the computers of the day. How do you read YOUR files and access YOUR images? (they don't belong to Nikon...)

I don't think that file formats are not something that anyone can expect to keep any sort of intellectual property tied up in. Especially if those files are to be actually used by anybody. For what it's worth, I'm one of the people who years ago started decoding Canon's CRW format and publishing the format on the web...
I'm very happy that Adobe formulated and published the DNG format for RAW data (just like they did with TIFF). There are now many independent pieces of software for accessing this data and personally I now transform all my RAW files to DNG (it also has lots of benefits in terms of workflow with XMP-enabled software).

Damn - I said I was going to shut up, didn't I...
Time to take a deep breath, walk away from the keyboard, and find a beer! We really don't need to argue over this one right now.

If you haven't seen it already you might want to read the OpenRaw website.

Cheers!

[sejanus]

Dave has it on the money. Kipper I don't think comparing to negs is the same, as anyone with *openly available* chemicals can develop the film.

The issue is that Nikon is only going to compile their SDK under Win32/Mac and thats it. Whilst it's good they've relented a little, it's still ridicoulous to lock a part of the file. I don't think theres a huge amount of unix users out there using nefs relative to the windows/mac base, but still - nikon are locking those users out and forcing them to reverse engineer the file format. Thats just garbage imho, they should stick to developing cameras and sensors, not encryption.