RAW imports, cannot be shared?

[AndreaR]

Out of curiosity, I always see any photo product have its own RAW import compatibility.

 

The RAW support I see Apple release every now and then on their system updates, cannot be used for imports from your (or any other developer's) app ?

 

I just wonder why every image app developer have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to RAW imports  :P

[Achim63]

Apple would be a bad idea - they are really slow with updating their RAW compatibility list. I even had to switch from Aperture to Lightrooom since Apple apparently simply stopped to support Samsung cameras at some point (which with hindsight was the right thing to do, since Aperture was dropped completely by Apple).

So a dependency to a 3rd party could end up disastrous.

 

Life would be much easier if the camera manufacturers would agree upon a common RAW format like DNG.

[billtils]

We are more or less at the mercy of third party software developers, how Apple is exiting from "Professional" apps as fast as it can and Adobe is screwing every drop of blood out of its large band of dependent users are 2 examples of "more".  There is some respite on the "less" side in that the reputable camera manufacturers provide their own RAW developer software and (at least in the ones I know about) offer "edit with" or similar exit gates to editors such as AP.  However, (and this is a generalisation) they are camera folks not software ones and their programs can be, shall we say, a wee bit clunky at times  ;) .