Soft cropping

Some cameras allow the specification of non-standard crop formats, i.e., aspect ratios that differ from the sensor aspect-ratio.

For example, the Pentax K-1 (and the successor, the K-1 II) support shooting 1:1 square crops.

At least for these cameras, the raw files still contain the full (3:2) image information but apparently there is some crop/masking information in the files that C1 uses to only show the 1:1 crop. Unfortunately, it is not possible to retrieve the cropped out part of the image using C1. Earlier C1 versions did not apply a hard crop and personally I would prefer that behaviour because it is easier to quickly define a 1:1 crop in C1 compared to having to use a different RAW converter that does not enforce the removal of the extra image content left and right.

Would it be possible to only automatically apply a centred 1:1 C1 crop to 1:1 images from the Pentax K-1, i.e., use a soft-crop rather than completely making the additional data inaccesible? That way, one could either shift the 1:1 crop horizontally in post-production for fine-tuning or just go back to full 3:2, if the 1:1 crop did not work out at all.

The raw files occupy the same space as 3:2 files do but currently there is no way to retrieve the additional data in C1.

I am assuming that other cameras might use the same approach -- storage of the full image data but specifying a crop/mask to be applied during RAW development -- which is way I phrased the title of this request in a brand-agnostic manner.

Pre-applied crops to full images should satisfy everyone: Those who don't want to be forced to manually apply crops in post-processing, and those who sometimes want to retrieve some image content outside the original crop.

An analogue situation would be if C1 did not allow raw images to be edited in colour if the camera specified that the default development approach is B&W. It is great if C1 acknowledges some in-camera choices but in my view it should always be possible to make alternative decisions in post-processing.