I get quite a few hits from searches looking to find information about converting the RAW files from the S5600 so I thought it’s about time I posted some info. I personally use Photoshop Elements 4 for editing my photos so I make use of the free Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) download which handles RAF files. Using ACR in Elements does not give quite the same functionality as when it is used in the full Photoshop CS2 package but all the essentials are included. If you’re not a Photoshop user you can still download the free DNG converter from Adobe which will use ACR to convert your RAF files to DNG format (surprise, surprise!). So if your editing package supports DNG then this may be an option?
The only other packages I have tried are the FinepixViewer software that came with the camera, the free S7Raw package, and Adobe Lightroom. The FinepixViewer software is quite good but the RAW converter that is packaged with the UK cameras is next to useless. The S7Raw package on the otherhand is excellent. If I was not an Elements user then this is the one I would use. There are quite a few comparisons of RAW packages on the web and S7Raw is highly regarded. Adobe Lightroom handles RAF files without a problem but this is still beta software and no price or release date is available yet.
For a more complete list of packages that support the S5600 I suggest you take a trip to raw-converter.com where you can search by camera model and/or RAW file format and it then gives a list of software packages that are available. Strangely searching using the S5600 does not display ACR but the other packages mentioned here are included (and a few more that I haven’t tried).
As with all RAW converters the results they give are very subjective and I suggest that you try them out yourself.
I’m new to the RAW format, particularly RAF. You information was very helpful getting me started.
Thanks you.
Hi Philip,
I found another solution for RAF files problem. I’m using free XnView. This browser read RAF format files and can write it to PSD format. Of course this file is big but I save it as JPEG. Than it’s relativ small.
In example:
RAF 2606×1962x48bit 10,69 MB
PSD 5212×3924x24bit 54,46 MB (200% increased)
JPG 5212×3924x24bit 9,80 MB
JPG in 400dpi – 13″x10″
JPG in 300dpi – 17″x13″
It’s maybie not wrong.
Your photos are very good and your www-pages too.
Sorry for my english.
Hi Darek,
Thanks for the comments.
You may also want to take a look at Raw Therapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com/) as that is free and supports RAF files. I keep meaning to try it out but have not found the time yet.
Cheers,
Phil
I need your help please. I am looking for a plug-in which will allow me to open .RAF files in Photoshop 7. Fuji sent me to Adobe but they no longer archive plug-ins for PS 7. Can you suggest a way to locate this plug-in. I have done an internet search using .RAF+photoshop 7 (which is how I found you) but so far have been unsuccessful.
Thank you for your time,
Bill Hartsock
Bill,
I don’t really use RAF format anymore as I’ve been using a Samsung DSLR for that last year. However, I’m not aware of a plugin-for Photoshop 7 that opens RAF file. Have you considered using another product to convert the files before opening them in Photoshop 7? Photoshop Elements will uses the Adobe RAW Converter and then you could save the files as TIFF or PSD for further processing in Photoshop 7. Alternatively several of the free RAW converters would convert the RAF file to TIFF.
Boys, never discard Fuji RAW format. It is just perfect.
I use ACDSee Pro 2.5, which has a powerful RAW editor (try S7 also) that preserves all the data captured, and saves external processing settings (you can create many different, also). First of all, it does a good deal of auto pre-processing, seamless.
I have an S5100, old one, but with RAW, few people can beat me. Even focus, I see that I don’t need to turn on Macro for very near shooting. I get very little noise everywhere. There is no comparing with the cheap JPG. With a 2Gb XD card I get 244 shots (I have two).
As said by ACDSee, you can process your RAW picture exactly like in a negative film, so you get lots of shadow and highlight detail, just by operating your “equalizer”.
Color temperature, sharpness, noise … at your fingers.
problem with some developers for it is that the octa shaped diagonal arranged photo sites mean none standard demosaic algorithms produce higher iq or resolution. Ie. fuji software as terrible as it is produces 10mp images instead of 5mp.
I notice from experimenting with 100% crops from various developers that resolution wise you can get a better result using none standard demosaic algorithms (when compared to regular and doubling up resolution through regular resizing by interpolation).
The latest acr (5.2 I believe at this time) does an ok job but it doesn’t translate the colour values correctly and blue channel is oversaturated and inaccurate EVEN WITH adobe camera profiles installed and suffers from saturation issues “out the box” so I doubt the demosaic algorithm is as perfectly matched as fuji’s.
Shame since the fuji raw software is terrible for the s5600 (my camera) and is either muddy and too soft degrading iq drastically or horrendous sharpening halos blah blah. If only fuji would either make decent software or alternately release their precious “secrets” concerning their demosaic algorithms and super ccd details since they still hold a lot of info back (including from adobe who have asked). What good is such features if they won’t give details to 3rd party devs and can’t write inhouse sw to take advantage of it?