Working without changing RAW files

aesmith

• January 11, 2008 08:54

Hi,

Newcomer and weekend photographer here, with Nikon D80. I'm trying out different RAW software.

I dislike the way the Nikon apps write changed settings back into the .NEF files. I want to keep my NEFs as they came from the camera, and also I worry that writing to the NEF something could go wrong and corrupt the files. So with Nikon software I wouild need to keep two copies of each NEF - one adjusted for processing, and the original.

As I understand it, Capture One doesn't change the NEF, but writes a companion file containing the adjustments and processing settings. Is this correct?

As far as I can see that is the case, but in testing I find that Capture One won't work on a read-only NEF. Is it actually writing to the file "behind the scenes"? If its not, I don't see why it needs read/write access.

Thanks in advance for any clarification.

Tony S

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  Paul Steunebrink

  • January 11, 2008 09:38

  [quote="aesmith" wrote:
  (...) As I understand it, Capture One doesn't change the NEF, but writes a companion file containing the adjustments and processing settings. Is this correct?
  
  As far as I can see that is the case, but in testing I find that Capture One won't work on a read-only NEF. Is it actually writing to the file "behind the scenes"? If its not, I don't see why it needs read/write access. (...)

  
  Hi Tony, welcome to the forum.
  Regarding your first question, yes this is correct. CO4 (and previous versions) does not write to the raw file but stores adjustments in sidecar files.
  Regarding your second question, I do not have an answer. I don't have a Nikon DSLR and I am not familiar with the concept of read-only NEF. Is this a camera setting? I am more familiar with computers and noticed that raw files restored from read-only media like CD/DVD have the read-only bit set, including the folder. This prohibits CO4 to write to that folder to store the sidecar files. Sometimes this gives the user the idea that CO4 writes to the raw file. To solve this, remove the read-only bit from the folder.

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  aesmith

  • January 11, 2008 12:55

  Thanks for the reply. By "read-only NEF" all I meant was that I had set the read-only flag on the NEF files. The actual operating system file property, not any Nikon specific file setting.
  
  If I do that, Capture One won't work on the file. If I remove the read-only attribute from some files in the directory then Capture One will edit those files but not the others with the RO flag still set. I'm not setting the whole directory to read-only, so in all these cases Capture One can still write to its Settings and Output folders.
  
  With the resources I have just now, I can't tell whether Capture One is simply testing for read-write permission to the file, or whether it actually opens it for read-write. In the latter case, of course, the file is at risk even if Capture One doesn't intend to write to it, as a defect in the software could corrupt the file. In that case we'd be back to having to always take a copy of the RAW files to be worked on.
  
  Tony S

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