RAW photo viewer/editor

[sterlingsteves]

A app that reads .dng files and would allow simple flagging for keep or not keep would make me very happy, image manipulation can be done late on the desk top at home,
all i want is a viewer that I can use on site to check the images rather than the tine camera screen.

This is what I am looking for as well. All I want is to quickly preview my images in higher quality resolution to get a better idea of the image quality. I find that the 3" camera monitor is not very accurate. A tethered option would be ideal. I don't want to transfer or work on the images in the field.

 

[saras]

I really hope this can happen soon. All my table is used for is ebook reader. I would love to look at my sony .arw raw.

 

[rcketscientist]

I've god good news guys. I'm in the process of developing a RAW viewer for Android right now. I have a library in place to process the RAW images, and over the next couple of days I'll be working towards dumping thumbnails, then viewing full-size images. Once that's in place I'll develop a simple GUI and get a first hack to the masses. I'll keep everyone posted.

I'm also working with the piRAWnha folks to port some of their editing capabilities once I have the framework in place.

 

[bundenz]

Nice. I almost bought an iPad because of the lack of photography-oriented apps on Android, especially apps that can read RAW.
Honestly, I don't have much interest in editing features on such an app.
I'd be more interested in tethered capture - both wireless (like eye-fi + Shuttersnitch) and wired (using USB) - and quick previews. That piRAWnha app seems to take a long time to load files, while the native iOS app shows pictures in an instant.
While being able to do quick retouches and exporting to jpeg is an interesting feature, I think most photographers are more interested in the tethered capture capabilities.

 

[zennit]

This is going to make my android tablet the perfect device for use with my canon 550d!!!! Any ideas what version of android it will work on and what spec tablet will be required? I'm running an advent vega with 1ghz tegra 2 and 512 ram. Where will you release it? I would be more than happy to test it for you Great work!

 

[zennit]

have you seen this one for the ipad

Photosmith – The Grand Tour | Photosmith – the iPad mobile companion for Adobe Lightroom

i would just be happy to view my raw files to make sure they look ok

 

[gmurphy]

Pro photographer here. My interest would be to view and tag raw files on my xoom over my network Leaving the edits for another day. I read somewhere that ps3 media server allows viewing of raw files can anyone confirm?

 

[rcketscientist]

My first interest is simply viewing also and that will be the initial build. But why stop there? Might as well give some basic manipulation functionality, tweaking some levels could help you decide how to tag/whether to delete. I wouldn't view it as an editing device...that's much too cumbersome.

A lot of people are mentioning tethering and initially I won't be worrying about that. I picked up a USB compactFlash reader and confirmed that I could load my RAW files onto my tab. Not ideal, I'd much prefer to simply connect the camera, but in my case (50d/5dmII) it's not that simple, since the camera requires a driver which does not exist for android (and I'm not a driver-level coder). Not sure if that's the case for all cameras, but I imagine so. As for wi-fi sd tethering, I'm lacking the devices or experience to test that. Hopefully someone else can fill in there.

After I thought about it the reader really isn't half bad anyway. Half the time I have 2-3 cards to go through at the end of the day and the camera is more cumbersome to load/unload then the reader.

Initially I'll probably release a beta to side-load. There are a ton of cameras out there and there's nothing like getting real-world results as opposed to using test galleries.

I'll let you know when something is available.

 

[rcketscientist]

Thanks for the link to photosmith. I personally use lightroom also and it would be a good idea to lift as many ideas from there as possible. Sync'n with LR is something I could think about in the future, but for my personal use a tablet doesn't have enough storage to make it a useful medium to transport pictures to the PC (days of shooting). My main goal is to get a decent look at pictures to tag and to know what can definitely be thrown out to clear room for the next day.

 

[bundenz]

Sorry, I don't have an eye-fi sd I can test with Android. But I don't see why it shouldn't work... You can easily set up a wireless network on Android and that's all it needs to work, as far as I know.
Tethering with eye-fi certainly sounds like the easiest solution for tethered capturing, although the more expensive one as one has to buy an eye-fi SD and - in the case of most pro photographers - a CF-SD adapter. You could just instruct your app to monitor the folder where the RAW files are being downloaded to and show the pictures as they're being taken, either in gallery view or full-screen.

 

[rcketscientist]

I didn't mean eye-fi as a means to transfer, just as an option. I mostly shoot landscape, but you still wouldn't catch em dead going through the trouble of an sd/compact adapter. Anyone shooting sports can't consider the option.

The various makers have taken different routes with the means of handling the various storages (internal/sdcard/usb). So I think the safest bet initially is to make an open file dialog, so that should work either way.

 

[bundenz]

Not sure I understand what you're saying.
I'm talking about an SD to CF adapter, so you can use an eye-fi card in your 5D II for example. Personally, I don't see that as cumbersome.
I'm just looking for a simple setup where my client can follow the shoot (without being breathing over my neck haha) while at the same time my shots are being backed up to the tablet. It'd be nice to have tags, stars and all that jazz as well, of course.
Even for landscape shooters as yourself - I do it time to time too - it'd be a convenient setup. Being able to preview a shot in a bigger screen, a few instants after being taken and without having to transfer it manually would be a nice thing to have.
I won't say anything about sports photographers because I don't know if eye-fi is fast enough to unload the number of shots those guys take in bursts. I doubt it can handle it, although jpegs are quite smaller.

I'm just talking from a portrait/fashion photographer perspective. I don't know a thing about coding and I don't even know if Android would allow such operations. Just throwing out ideas and what I'd like to see in a serious photographer-oriented app

 

[Bootstrap Bill]

In fact, I would pay to get this done!

Hey guys,

I actually thought of this the other day, after a day of shooting photos, I really didn't feel like firing up a laptop and just to view my photos and do some light editing. Which got me thinking I should make an app to do something like this on a tablet. I envisioned myself sitting at Starbucks or Java moose... Android Tablet in hand, Going over the days shots, and fixing them up.

So my question to you guys is... what kinda app are you envisioning? something with a similar tool set to what was described above? any other creative ideas? the more feedback I get, the more motivation I'll have to get this done, so let me know your ideas

Nick

Why not keep Lightroom or Photoshop running on your PC/Mac at home and use some sort of remote desktop app to access it?

 

[bundenz]

Why not keep Lightroom or Photoshop running on your PC/Mac at home and use some sort of remote desktop app to access it?

Well, you'd still have to transfer your images over to your laptop.

 

[rcketscientist]

Yah, you sold me a bit on the insta-ten-inch view idea. Baby steps tho. When I get this up and running I'll see if someone wants to donate the eye-fi/compact setup for a week so I can figure out if it's possible. But first things first, still gotta get 'em to read off the internal ;-).