RAW Hostable Photo Sharing Site

[dryicerx]

At the moment I am working on the development of a photo sharing site similar to smugmug/zenfolio, Something I learnt from our surveys and even TPF is the need for a way to store RAW photos online as well (from the pro photo folks).

If you were to upload RAW files, what exactly do you want/expect to do done with them after they have been uploaded?

• Just store the RAW file for later retrieval
• Do RAW Conversion On-line
• Sell RAW files
• Other?

Do note that uploading RAW will take a lot longer due to their size. For now, don't worry about the storage space required or the computing power required to process the raws.

Fire away :)

[Hogleg 44]

Please Expand on "Do RAW Conversions On-Line". Does this mean simply display? Or do corrections and save a copy as a different format?

Also Keep in mind that a 5DII Raw file can push 30 MB.

[dryicerx]

Originally Posted by Hogleg 44

Please Expand on "Do RAW Conversions On-Line". Does this mean simply display? Or do corrections and save a copy as a different format?

Also Keep in mind that a 5DII Raw file can push 30 MB.

Which ever people want. Simply displaying it is not a problem (without any adjustments or anything). Like a preview.

Doing corrections and saving as a different format would be tricky and really no one has anything like that implemented (since it's really not realistic right now). When ever you do a correction, a signal needs to be sent to the server to process the RAW, and then the resulting adjustment view needs to be send back... the latency will be the real killer here.

Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, not really a issue any more.

If you wanted to store RAW images online, what features do you want? (or anyone)

[RKEnnis]

The idea of a photo sharing site that supports RAW images is an interesting one.

I'd want it do do more than just allow for uploads and retrieval at a later date. I mean, that would be a nice feature. But there are plenty of existing ways to do that. I guess if someone was already using your site to display their entire portfolio, the ability to upload selected RAW images could be compelling.

At the very least, I'd like to have some sort of control over the way the image is displayed. If I could do my adjustments on the image before upload, and expect the uploaded image to show my adjustments, that would be really cool. Theoretically you would be able to apply the adjustments on the server programatically, assuming that the user also uploaded an xmp file. You could even apply a crop according to the data in the xmp. One hurdle I see to this idea is the proprietary nature of the different manufacturer's RAW file formats. I'm not sure if you would need to use the RAW format SDK from each camera maker, or roll your own code. As you mentioned, there would be very real performance considerations here.

Allowing the user to do adjustments on the uploaded image would be a very cool feature. From a technology standpoint it would be a very interesting project. With that said, I'm not sure how many Pros would use that feature, since I assume most of them already have a RAW workflow that they are happy with.

I do think that applying an "arbitrary" adjustment when displaying an image would leave users disappointed. I think you would almost be obligated to find some way to apply the user's custom adjustments.

Note: I know you wanted the opinions of pro photographers, and I'm not one. But I wanted to comment anyway :)

[jamiewallace]

I'm confused. If you are aiming more at the general population than pros why support RAWs at all. 90% of the general population don't know what RAW files are and of the remaining 10%, very few use them. Even fewer would want to upload them.

Seems like a pro feature to me.

[redhale]

This is an interesting idea. How far along are you in development?

One question I would have is: can the major browsers display images in Camera RAW format? If I were to venture a guess, it would be no. Perhaps you've found a conversion tool that can convert RAW to JPG on the fly (if you have, that is awesome, please post a link!).

Cool idea!

[Hogleg 44]

Keep in mind that SmugMug can already store Raw files, (for a price). "Smug Vault Cloud Storage"
And Phanfare will soon offer Raw storage. (again, for a price)

[dryicerx]

Originally Posted by jamiewallace

I'm confused. If you are aiming more at the general population than pros why support RAWs at all. 90% of the general population don't know what RAW files are and of the remaining 10%, very few use them. Even fewer would want to upload them.

Seems like a pro feature to me.

Woops yeah confusing indeed, I meant the project I am working on now is for general population, but what I am asking for RAW features is for a future project for Pro's :) Two Different things.

Originally Posted by RKEnnis

The idea of a photo sharing site that supports RAW images is an interesting one.

I'd want it do do more than just allow for uploads and retrieval at a later date. I mean, that would be a nice feature. But there are plenty of existing ways to do that. I guess if someone was already using your site to display their entire portfolio, the ability to upload selected RAW images could be compelling.

At the very least, I'd like to have some sort of control over the way the image is displayed. If I could do my adjustments on the image before upload, and expect the uploaded image to show my adjustments, that would be really cool. Theoretically you would be able to apply the adjustments on the server programatically, assuming that the user also uploaded an xmp file. You could even apply a crop according to the data in the xmp. One hurdle I see to this idea is the proprietary nature of the different manufacturer's RAW file formats. I'm not sure if you would need to use the RAW format SDK from each camera maker, or roll your own code. As you mentioned, there would be very real performance considerations here.

Allowing the user to do adjustments on the uploaded image would be a very cool feature. From a technology standpoint it would be a very interesting project. With that said, I'm not sure how many Pros would use that feature, since I assume most of them already have a RAW workflow that they are happy with.

I do think that applying an "arbitrary" adjustment when displaying an image would leave users disappointed. I think you would almost be obligated to find some way to apply the user's custom adjustments.

Note: I know you wanted the opinions of pro photographers, and I'm not one. But I wanted to comment anyway :)

It would be a bit tricky to apply Xmp or other sidecar file formats since theire proprietary to each program you use (lightroom), but not impossible. Applying a already created config wouldn't be too much work, it's allowing the user to do adjustments live (or almost live) that would be the really hard part.

The different raw formats is indeed a problem, but the dcraw project (it's open source) has come quite a long way being able to decode all the major formats, and I'll probably start from there by contributing to that project and using dcraw as the decoder part instead of rolling my own from zero.

And all comments very welcome :D

Originally Posted by redhale

This is an interesting idea. How far along are you in development?

One question I would have is: can the major browsers display images in Camera RAW format? If I were to venture a guess, it would be no. Perhaps you've found a conversion tool that can convert RAW to JPG on the fly (if you have, that is awesome, please post a link!).

Cool idea!

Development wise on my current project (the one aimed at the regular folks for sharing photos) about 90% at Private Alpha testing now. The RAW idea is still a idea (for future project).

I don't know of any browser that can display RAW images, the idea I had was doing raw conversion on the server side (to jpeg or png) and throwing it back at the user. dcraw is open library that handles pretty much any type of raw image you throw at it, you can make a cgi script that uses that to do raw to jpeg on the fly.