dcraw is an
open-source computer program which is able to read numerous
raw image format files, typically produced by mid-range and high-end
digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s. dcraw converts these images into the standard
TIFF
Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word process ...
and
PPM image formats. This conversion is sometimes referred to as ''developing'' a raw image (by analogy with the process of
film development
Photographic processing or photographic development is the chemical means by which photographic film or paper is treated after photographic exposure to produce a negative or positive image. Photographic processing transforms the latent image in ...
) since it renders raw image sensor data (a "digital negative") into a viewable form.
A number of other image processing programs use dcraw internally to enable them to read raw files.
Development of dcraw began on February 23, 1997. Version 1.0 was released in revision 1.18, on May 5, 2000. Versions up to 3.15 used the name ''Canon PowerShot Converter'', starting with v3.40 the name was ''Raw Photo Decoder'', switching to ''Raw Photo Decoder "dcraw"'' in v5.70. Version 8.86 supported 300 cameras.
The development has stalled, with only two releases since May 2015 and the last release dated June 2018,
but parts of dcraw are included in
LibRaw
LibRaw is a free and open-source software library for reading raw files from digital cameras. It supports virtually all raw formats. It is based on the source code of dcraw, with modifications, and "is intended for embedding in raw converters, ...
.
Motivation
While most camera manufacturers supply raw image decoding software for their cameras, this software is almost always