04/04/2001 Great News for Canon D30 users who use the CRW(RAW) file format

As with the Nikon D1 the users of the D30 discovered soon that the use of the CRW (12bit) RAW file format gets the best possible result out of the D30. Unfortunately the Canon software is not only very limited in functionality it is also painfully slow. Due to the proprietary compression schema all third party vendors needed to use the Canon SDK which is the cause for that slow performance.

Today Eric Hyman the author of the well known photo editing tool Bibble (the de facto standard of Nikon D1 NEF(RAW) conversion) announced today that Bibble can now process the native Canon CRW file format.

We had early version for trial and see many benefits for D30 users:

• Decoding of D30 photos is now about double as fast as with the Canon tools
• Allows the correction of the exposure by +/- 4EV
• Will also provide a Photoshop CRW plug-in
• Can browse CRW files and show an enlarged preview (larger than thumbnail)
• Enhanced options for WB correction
• Slightly better color than the Canon tools
• More image correction options on capture
• Can be used in batch mode
• Supports embedded profiles for TIFF files
• Can use monitor profiles for color correct previews
• Bibble can save files in 16bit TIFF format
• Saves all EXIF information with JPG and TIFF files

In short Bibble makes the D30 CRW format very attractive (for just $99) and demonstrates how clean and high resolution the RAW files of the D30 are. We are impressed by Eric's new tool.

A beta trial version can be downloaded here.