Introduction

The Unidentified Flying Raw (UFRaw) is a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras. It can be used on its own or as a Gimp plug-in. It reads raw images using Dave Coffin's raw conversion utility - DCRaw. UFRaw supports color management workflow based on Little CMS, allowing the user to apply ICC color profiles. For Nikon users UFRaw has the advantage that it can read the camera's tone curves. Even if you don't own a Nikon, you can still apply a Nikon curve to your images.

My guiding concept in the development of UFRaw is to give all the essential (and some non-essential) information and control over the raw conversion, with the hope that one could resolve all the exposure and white balance issues during the raw conversion. The obvious advantage is that one can make full use of the raw data. The provisional advantage is that this way we circumvent the current 8-bit limitation of the Gimp, as UFRaw does all manipulations in 16-bits.

There are some important features which are still missing in UFRaw:

• Sharpening.
• Embed EXIF data - UFRaw can save the EXIF data to JPEG output for a few supported formats. These formats include Canon (CRW, CR2), Nikon (NEF), Pentax (PEF), Samsung (PEF), Sony (SR2, ARW), Fuji (RAF) and Adobe's DNG. For information on how to save EXIF data for other formats you should use ExifTool by Phil Harvey as is explained here.

UFRaw was originally based on Dave Coffin's plug-in and Pawel Jochym's plug-in with live preview. Joseph Heled's RougePhoto is another Gimp plug-in with some interesting features.

UFRaw is licensed under the GNU General Public License. This means that it is free both as in free speech and as in free beer.

You are welcome to participate in UFRaw's Open Discussion Forum, browse and update the wiki page, file bug reports, or request new features (you should read UFRaw's MANIFEST before requesting new features). If you want to know when the next version of UFRaw will be released, you should subscribe to the ufraw-announce mailing list (very low volume). Release annoncements are also made at FreshMeat. And if you wish to experiment with UFRaw's latest source you can check it out from the CVS.

UFRaw is covered in Klaus Gölker's book GIMP 2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software (or in the German version Fotobearbeitung und Bildgestaltung mit dem GIMP 2).

French speakers might want to check out the book Développer ses fichiers RAW by Volker Gilbert. The book has a chapter on the different raw processing software and UFRaw gets its own section.

There is also a French version of UFRaw's user manual here.

Spanish speakers might be interested in this UFRaw tutorial in Spanish, a tutorial on getting better results from Ufraw and Gimp or this comperhensive book.

For Chinese speaker there is also a user guide.

I would like to thank all the UFRaw users that contributed to its development by sending patches, finding bugs and making insightful suggestions. Special thanks go to Vlado Potisk for many valuable suggestions, Shawn Freeman for adding support for Nikon curves and the curve editor and Niels Kristian for active participation in the development. Thanks also go to all the translators.

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News

16/06/2015 - UFRaw-0.22 released, based on DCRaw v 9.26.

• Fix security issue CVE-2015-3885.
• Removal of liblcms1 support.
• Better Foveon support.
• Lot of new camera support and bug fixes.

10/02/2015 - UFRaw-0.21 released, based on DCRaw v 9.23.

• Bug fix release.

24/09/2014 - UFRaw-0.20 released, based on DCRaw v 9.22.

• Fuji X-Trans filters are finally supported.

25/03/2013 - UFRaw-0.19.2 released, based on DCRaw v 9.17.

• Bug fix release.

07/03/2013 - UFRaw-0.19.1 released, based on DCRaw v 9.17.

• Fix crash triggered by compiler optimization.

26/02/2013 - UFRaw-0.19 released, based on DCRaw v 9.17.

• Maintenance release with lots of bug fixes.

20/02/2011 - UFRaw-0.18 released, based on DCRaw v 9.06.

• New Traditional Chinese translation by Tetralet.
• Port UFRaw to OpenSolaris. Patch by James Lee.

01/04/2010 - UFRaw-0.17 released, based on DCRaw v 8.99.

• Lens distortion corrections using lensfun. This feature is now fully implemented and enabled by default.
• Added a despeckling/denoising algorithm to solve issues with images taken under very difficult lighting conditions, like deep sea diving. It may be useful in other situations too. Patch by Frank van Maarseveen.
• Enabled hot pixel elimination by default.
• Calculate live histogram from working color-space instead of display color-space. Calculate live histogram from cropped area only. Based on patches by Konrad.
• Added auto-crop option.
• Allow upto 400% zoom.

15/10/2009 - UFRaw-0.16 released, based on DCRaw v 8.98.

• New German translation by Matthias Urlichs and Chris Leick.
• New Simplified Chinese translation.
• Added --with-gtk configuration option to make GTK optional.
• When GTK is used, the GtkImageView library is mandatory.
• Added lightness adjustmens by hue. Based on patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Added --color-smoothing command line option.
• Added --maximize-window command line switch.
• Configurable frame lines overlay. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• OpenMP support for preview redrawing. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• OpenMP support for VNG interpolation. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Added rotation control to the transformations page of the GUI. Patch by Frank van Maarseveen.
• Initial implementation of 100% preview. Based on patches by Frank van Maarseveen.
• Added support for hot pixel elimination. It is an experimental feature enabled by the configuration switch --enable-hotpixels. Based on patch by Frank van Maarseveen.

24/12/2008 - UFRaw-0.15 released, based on DCRaw v 8.89.

• Multiprocessing support using OpenMP. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Add progress report during the loading of raw files.
• Add JPEG optimization to reduce the file size without effecting image quality.
• Compatibility with the just released Exiv2-0.18.
• Support sRAW1 and sRAW2 formats of the Canon 50D and 5D Mark II.
• Some annoying bugs got squashed.

19/10/2008 - UFRaw-0.14.1 released, based on DCRaw v 8.88.

• Fix the "Send to Gimp" option to work with Gimp-2.6 that no longer ships the remote-gimp command.
• Output and Display intents where switched when a proofing transformation was used.

16/10/2008 - UFRaw-0.14 released, based on DCRaw v 8.88.

• Change license from 'GPLv2' to 'GPLv2 or later'.
• Move save-as dialog controls to main window.
• Add a 'remember output path' option.
• Grayscale conversion. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Experimental lensfun support. Patch by Andrew Zabolotny. Enable with './configure --with-lensfun'. Read this before using it.
• Experimental contrast adjustment. Patch by Bruce Guenter. Enabled with './configure --enable-contrast'.
• Added --enable-dst-correction configuration option to use local time (with DST) for file timestamps.
• Arbitrary rotation support for ufraw-batch. Patch by Martin Ling.
• Write EXIF data to TIFF files. Requires the soon to be released Exiv2-0.18.
• Load private resource file $HOME/.ufraw-gtkrc at startup.
• Replace the "use matrix" check box with a "Color matrix" profile. Patch by Rafael Espindola.
• Remove misleading or irrelevant EXIF fields. Patch by Martin Ling.
• Added --rotate=no to ufraw-batch. This is useful for creating contact sheets. Patch by Serge Droz.
• Improved auto-exposure/black/curve tools by using normalized raw histogram instead of raw luminosity histogram.
• For JPEG output, 2x2 sampling for the chrominance components was used by default. Now for compression>90 we use 2x1 sampling and for compression>92 we use 1x1 sampling.
• Use predictor value 2 when saving deflated TIFFs for much better compression.
• Expand white balance temperature to 15000K.
• New Swedish translation by Daniel Nylander.
• New Czech translation by Milan Knizek.
• New Italian translation by Daniele Medri.
• New Dutch translation by Simon Oosthoek.
• New Norwegian translation by Alvin Brattli.
• New Serbian translation (Cyrillic and Latin) by Miloš Popović.
• New Catalan translation by Paco Rivière.

12/11/2007 - UFRaw-0.13 released, based on DCRaw v 8.80.

• Simplified output path logic - output path defaults to the path of the input path.
• Added 'System profile' option to read display ICC profile from the X display. Based on code from Gimp.
• Do not read/write display ICC profile from/to ID files.
• Show camera white balance in EXIF page. Patch by Erik Burrows.
• Automatically fit histograms to allocated height.
• Read Canon lens from EXIF data. Patch by Andreas Steinel.
• Improved PPG interpolation. Patch by Alain Desbiolles.
• Remember maximized state of window between sessions.
• Add color smoothing option to all interpolation. Based on patch by alexander melkozerov. AHD+smoothing is exactly the same as the now obsolete EAHD.
• Added darkframe to GUI (patch by Bruce Guenter).
• Darkframe subtraction also handles hot pixels (patch by Bruce Guenter).
• Show spot values only if spot is selected and allow unselecting spot values.
• Add FITS output. Patch by Andreas Steinel. This option is disabled by default.
• Progressive JPEG encoding. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Blink over/under exposure in preview. Patch by Bruce Guenter.
• Enable --output option for stand-alone tool. It forces the output filename to the value specified. It is useful for F-Spot. Patch by Stephane Delcroix.
• Reimplemented the EXIF page. Patch by Andrew Zabolotny.
• Display flash mode in EXIF page.
• Moved shrink/size controls from Save dialog to main window.
• Added delete button to stand-alone tool.
• Added 'send to Gimp' option to stand-alone tool.
• Made the save-as button an icon only, to save space.
• Added option to save as PNG 8 or 16 bits.
• Write EXIF data to PNG files. Based on code from DigiKam.
• Added aspect ratio control. Patch by Andrew Zabolotny.
• New Spanish translation by Enrique Jorreto Ledesma.
• New Polish translation by Tomasz Golinski.
• New Korean translation by Homin Lee.

10/08/2007 - UFRaw-0.12.1 released, based on DCRaw v 8.77.

• Fixed handling of non integer shrink factors.
• Fixed crash when spot selector reached image boundary.
• Some TIFF images were wrongly identified as raw file.

30/07/2007 - UFRaw-0.12 released, based on DCRaw v 8.77.

• Full color management workflow with camera, display and output profiles.
• Added image cropping. Patch contributed by Martin Ling.
• Added rotate/flip support. Patch contributed by Bruce Guenter.
• Added scrolling and panning. Based on the new GtkImageView widget by Björn Lindqvist.
• Added support for dcraw's wavelet denoising. Code contributed by Niels Kristian Bech Jensen.
• Added Patterned Pixel Grouping (PPG) Interpolation. It can be even better than other interpolations in some cases and much faster. Patch contributed by Alain Desbiolles.
• Added EAHD interpolation. It is an enhancement of the AHD interpolation with another phase of color smoothing. The improvement is mostly seen in high contrast as it removes color artifacts such as chromatic aberration. Patch contributed by Michael Goertz.
• Read raw files compressed with gzip or bzip2. Patch contributed by Bruce Guenter.
• Display luminosity value and Adams' zone for spot value. Patch contributed by Greg Troxel.
• Added 'max zoom' (only 50% at the moment) and 'zoom to fit' buttons.
• Retain some hue and saturation when clipping pixels. This is only relevant when applying positive exposure compensation, and mostly for Canon cameras where positive exposure is applied by default.
• Added a Cinepaint plug-in. Thanks to Cinepaint developer Kai-Uwe Behrmann.
• Based the user interface more on icons and less on text.
• Dozens of smaller fixes.

06/03/2007 - UFRaw-0.11 released, based on DCRaw v 8.62.

• Add option to restore highlights. The restoration can be done either in HSV space giving sharp details or in LCH space giving soft natural details. This option is relevant when applying negative exposure correction in UFRaw.
• Add option for soft, filmlike clipping of highlights. This option is relevant when applying positive exposure correction in UFRaw.
• Give the correct camera exposure by default for Canon DSLRs. Until now raw images from these cameras came out under exposed.
• For Windows users, fix conflict with the liblcms-1.dll supplied with the Gimp windows instaler.
• Added translations to Danish, Japanese and Portuguese.

26/10/2006 - UFRaw-0.10 released, based on DCRaw v 8.41.

• Apply luminosity curve and saturation corrections in LCH(ab) space.
• Add the '--embedded-image' option to ufraw-batch for reading the embedded preview image in raw files.
• Use the above code in the Gimp plug-in for a much quicker generation of the preview thumbnails.
• Add mime types to recognize raw files in the Gnome desktop.
• Add schemas to generate thumbnails for these mime types.
• Modify the desktop entry to associate ufraw with these mime types.
• If 'save ID' is set to 'never again' then .ufrawrc is not written after each processed image.
• Add a 'Cancel' button to the 'Options' window.
• Fix compatibility issues with GTK+ 2.10.
• When handling ID files save output image in same directory as ID file.
• If input and output filenames in the ID file have the same path, then input filename is searched for in the path of the ID file. This allows moving raw and ID files together between folders.
• Add translations to French and Russian.
• Some bug corrections.

12/08/2006 - UFRaw-0.9.1 released, based on DCRaw v8.29.

• Recognize Sony's *.arw file type.
• Redirect exiv2 warnings from the terminal to the log.
• Fix build for some build environments (libjpeg errors).
• Treat Minolta's Alpha and Maxxum models as the Dynax model for WB presets.

03/08/2006 - UFRaw-0.9 released, based on DCRaw v8.28.

• Display EXIF data in user interface.
• Add darkframe subtraction option.
• More conservative highlight unclipping.
• Support filenames in URI format.
• Some bug corrections.

13/05/2006 - UFRaw-0.8.1 released, based on DCRaw v8.15.

• Fix Gimp plug-in half-interpolation crash.
• Fix possible crash in auto-exposure.

04/05/2006 - UFRaw-0.8 released, based on DCRaw v8.13.

• Preliminary zoom support, only up to 50% and with no scrolling.
• Auto white balance is much faster.
• Auto exposure is smarter, and hopefully better.
• Auto black and auto curve are much faster.
• EXIF data of Canon CRW files can be read using Exiv2 (not enabled by default).
• EXIF data of Fuji RAF files can be read using libexif (not enabled by default).
• White balance presets for more cameras.
• Fix the bug that sometimes caused a 'maze effect'.
• A few minor bug fixes.

03/03/2006 - UFRaw-0.7 released, based on DCRaw v8.05.

• Much more accurate white balance temperature setting.
• White balance presets per camera model.
• Show the channel multipliers in the UI.
• Apply base curve before gamma curve.
• Fix a few general bugs.
• Fix camera specific bugs for Sony F828, Sigma Foveon, Nikon D2H, D1X.

13/11/2005 - UFRaw-0.6 released, based on DCRaw v7.84.

• Enabled AHD (Adaptive Homogeneity-Directed) interpolation.
• Added base curve, which simulates Nikon tone curve behavior. (The old correction curve is still there.)
• Automatically apply the embedded custom curve only if the camera was setup to use this curve.
• Support the D1X rectangular pixels.
• Fix EXIF support with libtiff 3.7.4.
• Some bug fixes.

25/09/2005 - UFRaw-0.5 released, based on DCRaw v7.65.

• Read support for Nikon Tone Curve (NTC/NCV) files.
• Added a curve editor.
• Added control on the base curve (see the user guide for more information).
• Support the new DCRaw color matrices for better color rendering.
• More controls can be set from the command-line.
• Preliminary EXIF support.
• New UFRaw ID files contain all the conversion parameters and allow for batch conversion.
• New ufraw-batch replaces ufraw --batch.
• Numerous other changes.
• Notice that the new Adaptive Homogeneity-Directed interpolation is still not enabled.

01/07/2005 - an Open Discussion Forum was started.

• Everybody is welcome to post comments on UFRaw or other related issues.
• I submitted the first post regarding the latest changes to UFRaw.
• On this occasion I am offering the first ten poster in the new forum a free copy of UFRaw.

12/06/2005 - a CVS repository of UFRaw was started.

• The latest development version of UFRaw can be checked-out from the CVS. Read the README file for warnings on the development version.
• Bugs in UFRaw (in the latest stable version or in the development version) can be reported here.
• Request for new features can be made here. You should read UFRaw's MANIFEST before requesting new features.
• If you want to know when the next version of UFRaw will be released, you should subscribe to the ufraw-announce mailing list.

08/02/2005 - UFRaw-0.4 released, based on DCRaw v6.33.

• Rotate Fuji images by 45 degrees.
• Preview dialog is more responsive.
• Disable internationalization for Hebrew and Arabic (The right to left setting doesn't do good to the preview dialog).
• Bug correction - ufraw --batch did not calculate WB in some cases.
• Bug correction - Seg Fault for some images.

23/01/2005 - UFRaw-0.3 released, based on DCRaw v6.23.

• Added basic color management support using Little CMS.
• Created a standalone version with a GUI interface and batch processing support. Images can be saved in the PPM, TIFF and JPEG formats.
• Settings are saved between sessions in a configuration file.
• Added white balance temperature presets (direct sunlight, cloudy, shade, flash, etc.).
• Several possible live histograms.
• Initial (a bit slow) support for thumbnails in the Gimp open file dialog.
• Many smaller changes.

28/10/2004 - UFRaw-0.2 released, based on DCRaw v6.10.

• Added support for Nikon Tone Curves.
• This version can be used on the smaller 1024x768 screens.
• I'm finally satisfied with the Saturation control.
• Many small changes.

11/10/2004 - UFRaw-0.1 released, based on DCRaw v6.07.

• Initial version.

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For comments on UFRaw you can contact me at UdiFuchs@ .com

You are also welcome to visit my photography homepage.