negatives/linear-tiff

Converts RAW/NEF/CR2 files into linear 16bit-TIFF files.

Mirroring for negatives digitalized on their emulsion side.
Resizing when megapixel power is not everything.
Grayscaling: B/W lovers save up to 60% disk space.
Cropping: According to your Raw converter crop.
Orientation: According to your custom image rotation in Raw converter.
ICC profiles: Output images get a linear gamma profile.
No ‘custom gamma colorspace’ in Photoshop!

What happens inside? LibRaw’s dcraw_emu creates a linear 16bit TIFF file from your photographed negative raw file. ImageMagick’s mogrify then does the color-profiling, B/W grayscaling, mirroring, resizing, cropping, orientation, and ZIP compression. GNU Parallel uses all CPU cores to speed up the whole thing.

Homebrew Installation (MacOS)

The linear-tiff bash script can be installed by a Homebrew formula, which itself is part of the tomkyle/homebrew-negatives tap.

# Variant 1:
# Install tap first, formula second:
$ brew tap tomkyle/negatives
$ brew install linear-tiff

As “tapping” first is not neccessarily needed, you can install the formula directly:

# Variant 2
$ brew install tomkyle/negatives/linear-tiff

Usage

Open your terminal application and go to your images directory. linear-tiff will work in the current working directory. Run linear-tiff --help or -h to display help text. See Options and Examples.

$ linear-tiff [options] [-a | file(s)]

Options

-a, –all

All images — process any RAW/NEF/CR2 file in working directory, using GNU Parallel.

-c, –crop

Crop output image, if input file’s meta data carry crop information. Useful when cropping film holder parts away with your Raw converter—The output image will then be cropped as well, even if the crop info is stored a XMP sidecar file. Currently, no crop angles are supported.

–debug

Switch on debugging mode, showing everything that’s going on.

-d, –desaturate

Desaturate colors — recommended for B/W negatives. dcraw’s TIFF output is converted to 16-bit grayscale, with a linear gamma 1.0 ICC profile applied (Gray-elle-V4-g10.icc). Grayscaling saves up to 60% in file size.

-m, –mirror value

Mirror the image vertically and/or horizontally. Possible values are horizontal horizontal, vertical or even both (guess what). Short values are h and v. Examples: -m horizontal, -m v, -m both

-h, –help

Display help text

–orientation

Enable image rotation. Rotate your RAW files before running linear-tiff with your Raw Converter. “Orientation” metadata given in XMP file overrides any according RAW file entry.

-o, –output path

Output directory — default is current working directory. Example: -o results

–rating stars

Omit images that do not reach this star rating threshold. At least in Adobe Camera Raw, rejected images have -1 stars. To omit these (i.e. process only non-rejected files), pass rating parameter like so: --rating 0. To process only starred images, set to --rating 1

-w, –width pixel

Resize image — pixel width for larger side, preserving aspect ratio. Example: -r 3000

-v, –verbous

Verbous mode — show some more information under way.

Deprecated Options

-f, –flipflop (deprecated)

Mirror the image vertically and/or horizontally. Possible values are flop horizontal, flip vertical or even flipflop (guess what). Example: -f flop. This option will be replaced by -m, –mirror as of version 2.

-r, –resize pixel (deprecated)

Resize image — pixel width for larger side, preserving aspect ratio. Example: -r 3000. This option will be replaced by -w, –width as of version 2.

Examples

Convert all images or list of images in current working directory using defaults:

# All images:
$ linear-tiff -a 
$ linear-tiff --all

# List of images:
$ linear-tiff DSC0001.NEF DSC0002.NEF DSC0003.NEF

Desaturate B/W negatives:

# These are equal:
$ linear-tiff -d DSC0001.CR2 DSC0002.CR2
$ linear-tiff --desaturate DSC0001.CR2 DSC0002.CR2

# And those as well:
$ linear-tiff -ad
$ linear-tiff -a --desaturate
$ linear-tiff --all -d
$ linear-tiff --all --desaturate

Resize images:

# These are equal:
$ linear-tiff -r 2048 DSC0001.CR2 DSC0002.CR2
$ linear-tiff -a --resize 2048

Fullstack Conversion:

Create B/W versions of all images.
Resize and mirror horizontally.
Output goes into ‘fullstack’ directory.
If the raw file has been cropped in e.g. Adobe Camera Raw, the output will be cropped as well.
Skip rejected files.
Verbous output is showing what’s going on.

# These are equal:
$ linear-tiff -advc -r 2048 -f flop -o fullstack --rating 0
$ linear-tiff --all --rating 0 --desaturate --crop --resize 2048 --mirror horizontal --output fullstack --verbous

Changelog

New Features

v.1.1.6

Orientation: Once you have copied your RAW files to your HDD, you will like to rotate any upright/portrait images. linear-tiff will consider this orientation meta data. Just turn it on with option --orientation.
Faster conversion: LibRaw’s dcraw_emu is now used to extract the linear data. It is a whole lot faster than the original dcraw.

v1.1.4

Star rating filter: Photo managers like Adobe Camera Raw let their users reject bad images or rate better ones with ‘stars’. This release introduces a new CLI option --rating that requires a minimum star rating.

v1.1.2

Crop output file: The output file is now cropped when the input file’s meta data have crop information stored, even in an XMP sidecar file.
- Currently, crops with angles other than 0 are not supported. The reason, I simply did not experiment with it. Has someone experience on this? issue#8
- And there are issues with cropping raw files that are not Nikon NEF. Cropping works in generally, but the resulting pixel size still differs from from the expected values in your Raw converter by a few pixels. Workaround: use resize option. issue#8

v1.1.0

Long option names for those preferring self-explanatory options like --resize, --desaturate and so on.
Improved code quality: Wrapped main features in single functions; Adhere to Bash best practices and coding standards.

Upcoming Features

These features go into the current major version 1:

Custom configuration files: Would it not be fine if users could store their favourite options in a configuration file? ~/.negativesrc or ` ~/linear-tiff.conf` or even an INI, YAML or JSON? Head over to issue #7.

Roadmap to version 2

The -r option will be renamed to -w, as -r is more natural for the upcoming Rating filter, and so is -w for width.
The -f option will be renamed to -m, as the actually performed image action is mirroring horizontally or vertically. The option values flip, flop and flipflop will then become something like V, H or VH.
New batch mode trigger: New sub-command all will replace the current -a flag, like so: linear-tiff batch <options>.
Orientation: This option will be enabled per default.

Issues and FAQ

To see the full list, head over to the issues page.

Cropping the output image: The output cropping is in fact a “shaving”, when image size displayed in the Raw Converter is different than both the sensor size and draw’s output image size. linear_tiff creates the shaving information by the pixel dimensions of the embedded JPG thumbnail and dcraw’s output file. Currently Nikon NEF and Canon CR2 are supported. See issue#14 for what’s going on.

linear-tiff does not find my Raw photos in batch mode.
Currently, linear-tiff uses a regex to locate RAW files by these extensions: NEF (Nikon), CR2 (Canon), and RAW (Contax, Kodak, Leica, Panasonic). Leave a comment on issue#2 to “order” your favourite file extension. I’ll happily lengthen the regex to your needs :smiley:

I get a error message “mogrify: delegate library support not built-in”
ImageMagick must be compiled with litte-cms2 support. See issue#1 for details.

Development and Contribution

$ git clone https://github.com/tomkyle/negatives-linear-tiff.git

negatives-linear-tiff

Converts RAW/NEF/CR2 files into linear TIFF files, using GNU Parallel for maximum speed. Other features: B/W grayscaling, TIF resizing and ZIP compression.