Cropping a RAW file

pete4130

I need to crop a RAW file down. I need the central part of the image only as there is wasted space/no detail surrounding it (completely black). I've tried to crop the image as a RAW and save it a s a RAW in RAW editors (CNX and Bridge/photoshop).

I'm guessing as the nature of RAW files is to be non destructive the crop isn't permanent....to say that it will always know its been cropped and can be undone.

Does anybody know of a work around for this?

Thanks.

quilmore

there was a lightroom version that did that
and got updated almost immediatelly as nobody wanted that
never heard of any tool to mess with the NEF file other than with its metadata, sorry

smash

Lightroom 2 has it

oshead

Don't know any editors that do this permanently. Though that brings up the question, why would you want this? Other than to save space (a couple of MB's), It's not like you would use this format as your display format of choice.

Just curious. :pac:

oshead

steve06 wrote: »

Lightroom 2 has it

Eh.... No it doesn't.

smash

oshead wrote: »

Eh.... No it doesn't.

Not a permanent crop feature, but it has a good cropping feature

oshead

steve06 wrote: »

Lightroom 2 has it

steve06 wrote: »

Not a permanent crop feature, but it has a good cropping feature

LOL

nilhg

Lightroom will allow you to crop a RAW and export to DNG, this might be the best workaround for the OP? You can even embed the original RAW file but that will push the file size up a fair bit I'd imagine.

stcstc

save it as a dng maybe?

oshead

Saving it to DNG (another raw format) dosn't do it I'm afraid. The DNG remembers the original. You should try things before you suggest it as the solution.

stcstc

wasnt offering the solution, was offering a suggestion

i dont use DNG so hadnt tested it or anything, thats why i said maybe!!!

oshead

stcstc wrote: »

wasnt offering the solution, was offering a suggestion

i dont use DNG so hadnt tested it or anything, thats why i said maybe!!!

Steve. I wasn't implying you. Sorry for the ambiguity. I should have qouted nilig. It's clear in your post that you tought it might work. Also, I didn't refresh the page before posting.

nilhg

oshead wrote: »

Saving it to DNG (another raw format) dosn't do it I'm afraid. The DNG remembers the original. You should try things before you suggest it as the solution.

oshead wrote: »

Steve. I wasn't implying you. Sorry for the ambiguity. I should have qouted nilig. It's clear in your post that you tought it might work. Also, I didn't refresh the page before posting.

Well, I did try it before I posted, spent 10 minutes of my day trying to help somebody, I cropped an ORF, exported it from Lightroom, and opened it up in CS4 where the cropped version opened in ACR but I didn't go to the final step of reimporting it into Lightroom and checking the crop, sorry.

Heebie

There's really no point in cropping a RAW file down. Just save a new copy of the file in a format like TIFF or PSD/PSB if you're a Photoshop/Lightroom user. Those are lossless file formats that will handle 16-bit-per-channel files no problem. (I think PSB will do 32-bit per channel images.)
It's no longer really a "RAW" image.. but the necessary data is there if you don't truncate it down to an 8-bit per channel image.
I would recommend "PC Byte Ordering" if you're using a TIFF.. as many programs are still unaware that there is a difference between a Macintosh-byte-ordered TIFF, and a PC byte-ordered TIFF. (The Red and Blue channels are reversed between the two.. so applications that aren't aware of which order is which will usually have totally screwed up color when you load a mac-ordered file.)

pete4130 wrote: »

I need to crop a RAW file down. I need the central part of the image only as there is wasted space/no detail surrounding it (completely black). I've tried to crop the image as a RAW and save it a s a RAW in RAW editors (CNX and Bridge/photoshop).

I'm guessing as the nature of RAW files is to be non destructive the crop isn't permanent....to say that it will always know its been cropped and can be undone.

Does anybody know of a work around for this?

Thanks.

oshead

nilhg wrote: »

Well, I did try it before I posted, spent 10 minutes of my day trying to help somebody, I cropped an ORF, exported it from Lightroom, and opened it up in CS4 where the cropped version opened in ACR but I didn't go to the final step of reimporting it into Lightroom and checking the crop, sorry.

I did too, from lightroom. Opened it in PS and got the cropped version. But you'd expect that no matter. I then opened in ACR 5.6 and indeed the option to restore it to it's original uncropped version was available.

ThOnda

The easiest would be to get portable version of the Lightroom that could be run from a flash USB drive so you will have it always on you.