With the internet ever evolving, it's no surprise that browsers are becoming ever more efficient and powerful. With its latest release, WebRaw looks to show off its power as a browser plugin by being among the first to edit RAW photos in Mozilla Firefox. Could this new idea change the way we edit photos, and the programs that we use?
While this isn't meant to replace Adobe’s raw processing powers, but show the power hidden within each and every program, it may change the way we look through photos in the coming years. Having the ability to view RAW files in web browsers allows us to take creativity to a whole new level.
And this isn't the first company to build this type of technology either. Ukranian company, Pics.io is building a similar service to handle RAW images in browsers as well. Instead of using Mozilla’s AMS.js technology like WebRaw, Pics.io is using WebGL services to tap into the hardware directly.
The speeds to decode RAW images is pretty impressive as well for these two apps. For a 36-megapixel 40MB raw file from his Nikon D800, the native version of LibRaw took 7.8 seconds to decode while WebRaw took 12.9 seconds.
Perhaps in the coming years, with Adobe going to the Creative Cloud, we'll find new and clever ways to manage our RAW photos, without paying the $50 a month in service fees from Adobe.
Be sure to check out WebRaw if you're using a developer version of Firefox (such as Aurora).
[via CNET]
I think investments should be made in bringing an editor like GIMP up to speed as a viable professional alternative. I'm not sure what the best route is to achieve this, but to me an open source editor like GIMP, brought up to snuff, will liberate us from the shackles of Adobe.
I was messing around with www.pixlr.com the other day....basically a photoshop clone that runs in your browser using flash...wont do raw files, but does a pretty stinkin good job with everything else.....i was really impressed...if it handled raw files with like a web based "camera raw", and could do more on the fly rendering and previews, i'd be super happy.
Urgh. Firefox is such a blob of a browser now. It can barely play flash videos properly. I hate to think of what it would be like to edit raw images.
From your comment it seems to me that Flash sucks, not the Firefox.
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