Recent progress in RAWTRAN

There is a summary of last progress in rawtran (see previous posts: Dec 2008, Jan 2008).

I specified more precissely of the definition of the FITS color format. Be inspired by PNG format (libpng), I introduced a new keyword to the first dummy header

COLORTYP

by PNG_COLOR_TYPE_* to be setup to (string) value RGB for color FITSes. It will be useful for any software to easy recognize of the color format. Also the definition require additional condition on size of the images that is required to be equal for all color bands.

Another change is replace of the CBALANCE header keyword in header by the keyword COLORBAL (COLOR_BALANCE) with the same meaning. I think, it will be put better understanding to users. The CBALANCE is now obsolete and I don't expect any back-compatibility.

I added another type of conversion. The new type 4 produces multi-band FITS file including of all four Bayer colors in separated FITS image arrays. The type provides absolutely raw access to RAW data. It is another multi-band FITS different of the color type.

Some additional changes has been included to rawtran recently:

• Cleanup of code.
• CREATOR keyword.
• EXIF information by dcraw is written in the header block with "begin" and "end" delimiters to be simple parsed.
• Update of man page.
• Run-time detection of dcraw.
• A switch to pass additional parameters to dcraw.

It is still uncertain of the true meaning of Daylight and camera multipliers provided by camera and its meaning on a color white balance.

This post is a small virtual present to anniversary of FITS format which has been established exactly 30 years ago.