free Raw-File Converter/Editor

Question

I have RAW files output by a program with a specific set of properties (Photoshop RAW, 16 bits, IBM PC byte order, no header, 1 non-interleaved channel, variable sizes like 257X257 or 129X513); does anyone know of a free tool that will allow me to convert to and from this format, and possibly do basic editing (selection, copy/paste, rotation of selection)?

I've tried Picasa, XNView, and Paint Shop Pro 7 and none of them work properly. The closest i get is Paint Shop Pro which will at least make a serviceable attempt to open these files but i can't set all of the proper settings. XNView just might be able to edit it if i can figure out how to change the open settings for a particular raw file. So my questions at current are:

• how do i tell XNView to open a raw file a particular way?
• Failing that, is there any free tool that can open Photoshop-RAW files with the above settings (that's not photoshop)?

If it helps, i'm trying to import/export/edit hieghtmap data for maps for Supreme Commander.

Answer 1

From your description of the file format (raw data with no header), it sounds a lot like a 16 bit PGM without a header.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm_format

That's the simplest format possible really, just a series of pixel values, slightly complicated in this case by being 16 bits, so using 2 bytes per pixel instead of one.

Mentioning Raw image files is confusing because that's usually taken to mean the unprocessed and output from digital cameras or scanners, which will be a completely different format.

Edit:

I've had a quick experiment, and GIMP can work with the Photoshop raw format - select the "Raw image data" file format. However I'm not sure whether you can set that as 16 bit monochrome - look into the palette format file.

If you can't get that to work, I'd suggest seeing whether you can get ImageMagick to understand it. If it can, you can convert the image to a 16 bit PNG, which GIMP is capable of working with.

Edit 2: The other thing worth looking at is rawtopgm, which is part of NetPbm.

Something like

rawtopgm -bpp 2 129 513 imagefile

Windows binaries can be downloaded from here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/netpbm.htm

Answer 2

I have used this one a couple of times:

XDepth Raw

You might also want to look here: Software for handling camera RAW-files

Answer 3

Online Free Image Converter is a website that converts file from different media types, and should do the job. Give it a try and tell us how it works - I'm curious about this format.

The main advantage is that no installation is needed. The main disadvantage is the network bottleneck - if there are more than a few files, uploading each file to the site is ver uncomfortable.

Answer 4

I managed to get a copy of Photoshop which does the trick nicely (and is still the only program which can properly open these files).

Answer 5

quite sure IrfanView with plugins correctly installed will open that using the Open As Raw feature

Answer 6

Since RAW images contain so much more information than what is visible in typical output formats, you will at some point want a software that allows you to easily explore your options.

I started out with UFRaw which is a frontend to the DCRaw conversion tool and has a Gimp plugin, but then switched to RawTherapee as soon as it become open source since I believe it is by far the best free tool available.