More and more I'm shooting in Canon RAW, producing CR2 (12-bit) files. And learning how to apply non-permanent changes in Canon Digital Photo Pro (DPP). Only using JPEG (8-bit) when I know quality is not an issue, for casual stuff, when aimed for the web.
Everyday I'm learning more about DPP. Like that it supports bulk / batch editing for converting, cropping, and scaling images.
As I was reading Camera Raw 101, I started to take a look at Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) format and play with the Camera Raw plug-in. Still undecided as to what to use, in the end, for the long term. But the workflow with DPP seems fast and convenient. No trouble reading CR2s obviously.
To do high end imaging processing in Photoshop CS2, I need to convert to TIFF. Fortunately DPP can take care of that, producing TIFF (16-bit) files in the background.
But now that I'm heading into the deep end of double star measurement with a DSLR, wanting to use Réduc, I need files in FITS or BMP. DPP can't convert to either. I want to do this work on the new(er) computer John Charles, which has 4 cores. This should be the preferred machine for Ps work too... The multiple cores will help. And the biggest monitor(s). Although they are yet to be calibrated...
I had downloaded and installed IrfanView onto John Charles some time ago. It was so to do fast bulk image editing or conversion. I believe for the bundle of very large CAO work party images from Ralph. The bulk or batch feature can do conversion or renaming or both. The conversion is robust. It can output to different formats, with format option settings applied, resize images in a myriad of ways. The renaming controls are also very rich. As an image editor, I'm finding it awkward: it shows the histogram, thank you; but you can't touch it. After installing a plug-in, I got the app to support reading CR2 files. Good. Handy. But attempts to get it to output FITS have been unsuccessful. In part, lacklustre documentation. Even then, I learned that it can only produce 8-bit files. Not a deal-breaker for double star analyses.
Briefly looked at FITS Liberator but could not determine if it supported the files I wanted to needed.
Learned about IRIS. That it would open CR2 files and output FITS. But I found, like others, everything went green. Hrm. Next!
Had another look at Coffin's dcraw. I like the purity of it. The power. But that it doesn't convert to anything per se meant another tool was required. Grabbed NetPbm for Windows. And after fiddling at the command line for a while, I converted a RAW to FITS. Joy.
dcraw -c img_2607.cr2 | c:\Progra~1\GnuWin32\bin\pnmtofits > img_2607.fits
But when I opened it (in IrfanView) it looked a dog's breakfast. Not completely surprising. There are likely some settings I could adjust or apply at the CLI to get what I wanted. But I just didn't have the energy. Perhaps, down the road, when I've got my legs, and I want the highest quality...
All the while reflecting on Fireworks that I got to know well over the years. And Paint.NET sitting on John Littlejohn. I know it's gonna get crazier if I get hardcore into Ps... And I'm still interested in mapping over procedures and workflows to GIMP, for our non-Photoshop members.
And then I thought: this is getting ridiculous. I recalled Berkó saying he used BMP. I knew IrfanView could output that. Let's move on!
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