Ho John Lee’s Weblog

Someone got around to picking apart the raw image format for Nikon cameras. From an article today on News.com:

A Massachusetts programmer says he has broken a proprietary encryption code that has effectively forced some Nikon digital camera owners to use the company’s own software.

Because Nikon scrambled a portion of the file, legal worries have kept third-party developers like Adobe Systems from supporting Nikon’s uncompressed “raw” photos in their software. Nikon sells its Nikon Capture utility for $100.

Nikon’s white-balance encryption had hindered photographers who preferred other, sometimes faster or more capable, image conversion software by making it infeasible to convert large numbers of images. Canon–which bundles its raw conversion software with its cameras and does not charge extra–does not encrypt its photo metadata.

As a photographer, I absolutely want access to the full image data — effectively the “negative” for the digital image — especially if I’m going to purchase a high end camera. I generally use Canon equipment already, for a variety of reasons, including raw image support. I’m not sure why Nikon wanted to secure the white point data. It doesn’t actually make much sense for them to prevent their customers from using it; even if Nikon thinks their color processing path is better than any 3rd party software, charging their customers for what is arguably a basic function of the camera is silly. Maybe there’s some other reason they think it makes sense.

The legal ambiguity may leave Nikon owners without full support from Adobe for a while, but at least there will be some tool support available:

In an e-mail message late Thursday, Bibble Labs founder Eric Hyman said he had also broken the Nikon white balance code and had incorporated it in the latest version of his commercial image-manipulation software. Bibble Labs sells the full-featured version of its “Bibble 4″ software for $129, and a less-capable version for $69.

update 2005-05-10 15:42 roundup of followups at Metafilter

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Personal Technology, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.