A question about Irfanview & RAW images

[Al Dykes]

When I look at a RAW image in Irfanview, am I looking at the RAW bits
or am I looking at the jpg that the camera produces with it?

--
Al Dykes
News is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising.
- Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the Daily Mail

[Matt Ion]

Al Dykes wrote:
> When I look at a RAW image in Irfanview, am I looking at the RAW bits
> or am I looking at the jpg that the camera produces with it?

That depends on which option you select. If you go to Options ->
Properties/Settings -> Plugins tab, first section is "Options for NEF,
RAF, ORF, SRF, MRW, PEF, DCR, X3F, ERF, CRW/CR2". Default setting is
"Try to load embedded preview image (if available)".

At least, that's where it is on my installed v4.23... last time I needed
to change it was I think in 4.0x, and the settings dialog has changed
since then, so if you're on a different version you may have hunt for
it... but it IS there. Default is to NOT render the full RAW file,
which is primarily a speed option.

[Don Stauffer]

Al Dykes wrote:
> When I look at a RAW image in Irfanview, am I looking at the RAW bits
> or am I looking at the jpg that the camera produces with it?
>
>
>

Neither. Both RAW and JPEG are storage file formats. In any editor the
software creates its own array of pixels while displaying and actually
doing the editing.

[Bob Larter]

Al Dykes wrote:
> When I look at a RAW image in Irfanview, am I looking at the RAW bits
> or am I looking at the jpg that the camera produces with it?

Usually the latter, unless you've installed the optional Irfanview
plugin package. You can tell which you're using by how long it takes to
load the picture.

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