lightcraft/docs/raw-parity.md

RAW parity: cameras, formats, demosaic, colour and lens profiles

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (model-by-model measurement against Adobe's published camera list; use-weighted coverage; variant matrix; colour and lens sections; ranked next cameras) · Target: Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.5 / Lightroom 9.6 (Camera Raw 18.7)

Raw processing is the deepest single dimension of Lightroom parity: a photographer whose camera does not decode, or decodes with the wrong colour, cannot switch. This document measures it model by model. The numbers feed target-app-parity.md; individual shortfalls are ranked in gaps.md. Details per format: cr3.md, raf-compression.md, sony-lens-corrections.md, camera-preview-colour.md, denoise.md.

Headline

Measure	Value	Kind
Adobe-listed camera models	1,446	measured: raw/adobe-cameras.tsv
Decoded from sensor data and verified on a real file	234 (16%)	measured: raw/evidence.tsv
Decoder path should handle it, unverified	943 (65%)	measured from the format rules (632 of them DNG, mostly phones)
Preview-only (embedded JPEG)	233 (16%)	measured
Unsupported (not imported, refused or decodes wrongly)	36 (2%)	measured
Models added since 2017 (Camera Raw 10+): verified / unverified / preview / unsupported	81 / 641 / 24 / 8 of 754	measured
Share of photographers whose camera fully works (decodes from sensor data), use-weighted	~84%	estimated: measured classes × written usage weights × per-format confidence
…of which on a body we have verified	~40%	estimated, same weights
Camera colour: Adobe profiles vs ours	1,500 Adobe Standard profiles, 481 models with Camera Matching profiles vs 4 bundled profiles + per-file fits + 52 spectral matrices	measured (bundle listing, Adobe list, assets/camera-profiles)
Lens profiles: Adobe vs ours	3,635 vs 0 (in-file corrections only)	measured
RAW readiness (decoding 60%, colour 25%, lens 15%)	~56% (range 50–60%)	estimated, see Scores

Re-measure with python3 docs/raw/coverage.py (standard library only): it classifies every Adobe model from the format rules in the script (which mirror crates/raw/src) plus the per-model evidence, rewrites raw/coverage.tsv and prints the tables below; --check fails when the committed table is stale.

How it was measured

• Adobe's list: helpx "Camera Raw supported cameras" (the live page refuses scripted requests, so the Wayback Machine capture of 2026-10-03 was parsed): 1,446 camera rows from 40 makers after dropping profile-only rows; maker, model, extension(s), Camera Matching profile, minimum Camera Raw version. The year a model was added is approximated from that Camera Raw major version.
• What we decode: the decoders and their refusals in crates/raw/src (lib.rs routing, vendor/*.rs coding variants, crx.rs CRX limits, orf.rs / srw.rs compressed refusals), the import list lightcraft_engine::import::EXTENSIONS, and KNOWN_UNSUPPORTED in crates/raw/tests/corpus.rs. Doc claims were not used.
• Verified means a real file from that body decoded from sensor data in: the corpus test over the RAW_SAMPLES manifest (xtask/src/main.rs, 101 CC0 files; bodies whose sample is in KNOWN_UNSUPPORTED excluded), crates/raw/tests/cr3_corpus.rs (3 bodies, exact), the RAF reference check (raf-compression.md), and the raw.pixls.us bulk checks recorded in issue #535 (all 100 Sony bodies there; 87 decode) and PR #215 (every Panasonic / Leica RW2 / RWL / RAW body there, 178 files from 118 bodies). Bulk-check body lists were matched to Adobe names through the raw.pixls.us folder names. Checks without a body list (≈ 60 NEFs, 35 CR2 bodies for the CFA layout) are not counted as verified.
• Usage weights (raw/usage-weights.tsv): maker buckets from 2025 market data (Nikkei production: Canon ~36%, Sony ~29%, Nikon ~14%, Fujifilm ~12% of mirrorless; BCN retail: Sony 29.9%, Canon 27.4%, Nikon 15.1%), adjusted for the DSLR installed base and for the makers named in this repo's 325 user issues (Sony 33, Nikon 31, Canon 26, phones 23, Fujifilm 9, Panasonic / Leica 8, OM / Olympus 6, Pentax / Ricoh 6). Inside each bucket, 80% goes to the popular bodies of the last ~8 years (listed in the file), 20% to the bucket's other Adobe models.
• Per-format confidence for unverified bodies (the chance their files decode correctly): DNG, CR2, RAF, RW2 0.95; NEF, ARW, PEF 0.9; ORF, SRW, SR2 0.8; CR3 0.6 (the CRX decoder refuses several coding variants and only three bodies are verified; maintainers report the R7 working).

By maker (measured)

Maker	Adobe models	verified	unverified	preview	unsupported	Main reason for preview / unsupported
Sony	149	86	51	9	3	DSLR-A200…A390 and A850 12-bit compressed ARW (preview, #535); A100 and DSC-F828 refused (regression #702); SRF not imported
Canon	134	11	100	21	2	CRW (2000–2004 bodies) preview; EOS-1D / 1Ds TIFF raws not imported
Samsung	128	1	118	9	0	compressed SRW (NX1, NX30, NX300, NX500, NX2000, NX3000, NX3300, NX mini, Galaxy NX)
Apple	113	1	112	0	0	— (DNG / ProRAW)
Panasonic	104	93	11	0	0	—
Nikon	99	5	94	0	0	— (HE / HE★ is a per-shot setting, preview-only)
Fujifilm	97	16	55	26	0	pre-X FinePix RAF without a raw IFD (estimated split)
Google	88	1	87	0	0	—
Olympus	71	3	9	59	0	compressed ORF
Leica	61	13	48	0	0	—
Xiaomi, Oppo, LG, Huawei, OnePlus, Motorola, Nokia	139	0	139	0	0	— (DNG)
Pentax / Ricoh	60	4	56	0	0	—
Hasselblad	34	0	2	32	0	Hasselblad-compressed 3FR / FFF
Phase One / Leaf / Mamiya	59	0	0	43	16	IIQ, MOS preview; TIFF raws and MEF not imported
Casio	26	0	26	0	0	— (DNG)
DJI	21	0	21	0	0	— (DNG)
OM Digital Solutions	7	0	0	7	0	compressed ORF
Kodak, Konica Minolta, Epson, Sigma, GoPro, Contax, others	56	0	14	27	15	DCR, GPR not imported; KDC, MRW, ERF, X3F preview
All	1,446	234 (16%)	943 (65%)	233 (16%)	36 (2%)

By use (estimated)

Bucket	Weight	Camera fully works	On a verified body	Why
Canon	33%	72%	16%	17 of the 22 popular bodies write CR3; 2 of them verified, the rest at 0.6
Sony	27%	98%	91%	bulk-checked
Nikon	16%	91%	12%	decoders cover every NEF coding but HE; few bodies verified
Fujifilm	10%	91%	45%
Panasonic	4%	100%	98%	bulk-checked
OM / Olympus	3%	3%	1%	compressed ORF
Phones	3%	93%	1%	DNG
Pentax / Ricoh	1.5%	94%	14%
Leica	1%	95%	5%
DJI	1%	95%	0%
Medium format and others	0.5%	23%	0%	IIQ, 3FR, X3F
Weighted	100%	84%	40%

About 5 in 6 raw photographers' cameras decode, but only about 2 in 5 use a body we have actually checked, and Canon, the largest bucket, is the weakest of the big four.

Variant matrix (depth per format)

✅ decoded and checked on real files · 🟡 decoded, partial or unverified · ⬜ preview-only or refused.

Format	Variant	Status	Evidence
CR2	lossless JPEG slices	✅	8 corpus bodies; CFA phase from CR2CFAPattern (#85, 35 bodies); masked-column black level
CR2	sRAW / mRAW (YCbCr)	✅	vendor/cr2/sraw.rs, 31 samples from 16 models
CR3	CRX lossless, version 0x100	✅	M50, R100, R8 exact against a reference
CR3	C-RAW 0x100 (horizontal tiles), 0x200 (single 14-bit tile, adaptive QP)	✅	same 3 bodies exact
CR3	other CRX variants (vertical tiles, partial subbands, other plane flags, 0x200 multi-tile)	⬜	refused in crx.rs, falls back to the preview; which bodies write them is unmeasured
CR3	sRAW / mRAW	⬜	4-plane Bayer only
CR3	HEIF / HDR PQ	⬜	HEVC tracks recognised, not decoded
CR3	dual-pixel raw	⬜	never substituted
CRW	all	⬜	preview
NEF	uncompressed, lossless, lossy type 1 / 2, lossy after split	✅	D5100, D7000, D7500, Z f corpus; ~60 NEFs by hand; #633
NEF	packed 14-bit stored under a compressed tag (Z 6II uncompressed)	⬜	#769; fix in PR #671 (not merged)
NEF	High Efficiency / HE★ (JPEG XS)	⬜	named, preview (#193); needs a JPEG XS decoder
ARW	uncompressed, cRAW (ARW2), lossless LJ92 (L / M / S)	✅	86 bodies (#535); M/S black level 1024
ARW	packed 12-bit (A900)	✅	one CC0 file; A850 unmeasured
ARW	12-bit compressed of DSLR-A200…A390	⬜	preview (#535)
ARW	A100 ARW; SRF (F828, V3)	⬜	refused (#702); SRF not imported
ARW	ARQ pixel shift	⬜	no code
SR2	DSC-R1	✅	CC0 3221 sample
RAF	uncompressed, lossless and lossy compressed; Bayer and X-Trans; GFX 14/16-bit	✅	24 files from 13 bodies exact
RAF	pre-X FinePix without a raw IFD	⬜	raf.rs refuses (26 Adobe models, estimated split)
ORF	uncompressed 16-bit, 12-bit packed, two-field 12-bit, 12.8 bpp	✅	E-1, E-400, XZ-2 corpus; #651
ORF	compressed (every Olympus / OM body since ~2008)	⬜	orf.rs refuses; the E-M1 and E-M10 III corpus files are KNOWN_UNSUPPORTED
RW2 / RWL / RAW	formats 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 16-bit words	✅	118 bodies (#215)
PEF	uncompressed, Huffman, packed 12-bit	✅	K10D, K-3, K-5 IIs
PEF / DNG	Pentax pixel shift	⬜	frames not combined
SRW	uncompressed, 12-bit packed	✅	EX1 corpus; NX10, NX20
SRW	compressed 32770 / 32772 / 32773	⬜	refused
DNG	uncompressed, LJ92, lossy JPEG / Smart Preview, Deflate incl. float, LinearRaw, tiles / strips, row / column interleave	✅	6 corpus DNGs; 4 ILCE-6400 JXL DNGs
DNG	JPEG XL (DNG 1.7, lossless and lossy)	✅	synthetic bit-exact; real lossless and lossy files
DNG	Apple ProRAW (incl. semantic mattes)	✅	iPhone 12 Pro corpus; ProfileGainTableMap read but off (ΔE00 19 against Lightroom with it on)
DNG	phone DNGs (Pixel, Galaxy, Xiaomi…)	🟡	Pixel 2 XL only; white-level pile-up fix #548
DNG	GoPro GPR (VC-5)	⬜	refused
3FR / FFF	DNG-like layouts	🟡	decoded when uncompressed or LJ92
3FR / FFF	Hasselblad compression	⬜	preview
IIQ, MOS, MRW, ERF, KDC, X3F	all	⬜	preview
DCR, MEF, MFW, DXO, GPR, TIFF raws	all	⬜	not imported

Demosaic, levels, crops and lens metadata

Stage	Target	LightCraft	Status
Bayer demosaic	Adobe's own, plus AI "Raw Details"	AHD (default), PPG, bilinear (crates/raw/src/demosaic)	🟡 quality unmeasured against Lightroom; no Raw Details
X-Trans demosaic	✅	in-house edge-weighted directional	🟡 unmeasured
Foveon	✅ (older bodies)	—	⬜
Monochrome / LinearRaw	✅	handled, no demosaic	✅
Pixel shift (Sony ARQ, Pentax, OM high-res, Nikon)	✅ (Sony, Pentax, Nikon)	—	⬜
Black and white levels	per model, calibrated	read from each file (masked columns, maker notes, SR2SubIFD, CMP1)	🟡 per-body bugs keep surfacing: A450–A700 SR2 black level and M/S ARW pedestal (#535, fixed); 5D Mark IV CR2 renders dark (#455, open); white-level pile-up in phone DNGs (#548, fixed)
Crop masks and aspect	✅	DefaultCrop, Sony recorded size, Canon AspectInfo, Panasonic in-camera crops, Nikon CropArea	🟡 7RM3 / 7RM4 crop origin 8–32 px off (cosmetic)
Lens metadata	✅ read for profile selection	EXIF lens fields read; used only for the in-file corrections below	🟡
Highlight reconstruction	✅	neutral clip, chromaticity diffusion (highlight.rs)	🟡 tuned by eye
AI denoise	✅ Bayer and X-Trans, model bundled	Bayer only, user-installed weights, pure-Rust CPU / GPU	🟡 no X-Trans, no shippable weights
Super Resolution	✅	—	⬜
HDR / panorama merge to raw DNG	✅	linear DNG (float16 HDR) with the source's colour tags	✅
Convert to DNG	✅	uncompressed or LJ92 tiles (dngwrite.rs)	✅ (no lossy DNG)

Colour

Item	Adobe	LightCraft
Default profile per model	Adobe Standard for every model (1,500 profile names in the bundle)	the DNG's own matrices; else a pooled profile (4 bundled: ILCE-7CR, ILCE-7M4, X-H2S, X-T4); else a guarded per-file fit to the camera's embedded JPEG; else spectral matrices (52 models, rawtoaces-data); else a neutral matrix
Camera Matching looks	481 models (plus phone-maker looks)	none (the per-file JPEG fit imitates the camera's own look)
Creative profiles	Adobe Color, Portrait, Landscape, Vivid, Monochrome…	our own looks (Color, Neutral, Vivid, Landscape, Portrait, Monochrome)
DCP / dual-illuminant model	✅	dual-illuminant DNG colour (ColorMatrix / ForwardMatrix 1-2, CameraCalibration, AnalogBalance), HueSatMap, LookTable, ProfileToneCurve; external .dcp never loaded (clean-room)
White balance in Kelvin	✅ for every model	absolute Kelvin only where matrices exist; per-file fits give relative WB (#296, #730)

How far the default rendering is from Adobe's (CIE ΔE; measured where stated):

• Against the camera JPEG (what the fit targets): the Sony bulk check (#535) accepted fits on 81 of 87 bodies, median ΔE 5.1, ΔL* +0.2; rejected fits fall back to a neutral matrix at median ΔE 18.5, ΔL* −11, chroma ×0.39. RW2 140 of 174 files accepted, median 5.0. NEF 13 of 13, 2.9–7.8. RAF 23 of 24, pooled X-H2S 1.62 / X-T4 2.34. SRW 2.2–7.6.
• Against Lightroom itself (few): Sony DRO median ΔE76 7.5 → 3.3; Olympus E-1 vs Lightroom Classic ΔE00 11.25 → 8.30; ProRAW with its gain map ΔE00 19 (why the map is off). No measurement against Adobe Standard across models exists.
• User evidence: 33 open issues about raw colour or rendering (wrong colours, dark, flat, green, desaturated), the largest group of open core-path issues.

Colour score ~35% (estimated): most decoded files start close to the camera's own look (ΔE ~5), about 10% start far off (ΔE ~18), nothing is calibrated, Kelvin WB is missing for fitted cameras, and the distance to Adobe Standard is unmeasured. In the readiness numbers this becomes a colour factor of ×0.85 for a working photographer (they correct colour by hand, at a cost) and ×0.75 for the essentials user (the default look is what they keep).

Lens profiles

Item	Adobe	LightCraft
Profile database	3,635 profile files, 56 makers, auto-selected	0 (Adobe LCPs never used; no database of our own)
In-file corrections	✅	DNG opcodes (WarpRectilinear, FixVignetteRadial, GainMap…) applied; Panasonic / Leica RW2 distortion (79 photos, 13 bodies, 11 lenses); Sony tag 0x7037 distortion for the ILCE-7RM4A (2 lenses)
Vignetting / lateral CA from maker notes	✅	⬜
Manual distortion, vignetting, CA, defringe	✅	✅

Lens score ~10% (estimated): automatic correction reaches roughly Panasonic / Leica, phone and drone DNG users (~9% of photographers by the weights above); Adobe reaches nearly everyone.

Scores

Part	Weight	Score	Basis
Decoding	60%	76%	use-weighted 84% × 0.9 for per-body decode bugs still surfacing (levels, crops, WB: #535, #455, #461, #702)
Colour	25%	35%	see Colour
Lens profiles	15%	10%	see Lens profiles
RAW readiness	100%	~56% (range 50–60%)	45.6 + 8.75 + 1.5; demosaic and highlight quality unmeasured

The previous estimate (earlier on 2026-10-10) was ~50%, with decoding at ~78% weighted by maker from the format list alone. Measured model by model, decoding comes out about the same; the change is the written decomposition, not new decoding.

Remaining work, ranked by photographers unlocked per hour

Hours are Opus 5.5 agent hours, calibrated on this repo's raw PRs: RW2 every format 6.5 h (#215), compressed RAF 8.6 h (#282), CR3 CRX 10 h (#279), NEF lossy after split 4.7 h (#633), ORF 12.8 bpp 1.7 h (#651), HEIC 7 h (#609). "Gain" is the change in the use-weighted share whose camera fully works, from raw/usage-weights.tsv.

#	Camera / variant	Gain (points of photographers)	Hours	Gain per hour	Needs
1	Compressed ORF (every Olympus / OM body since ~2008)	+2.6	8–15	~0.20	CC0 samples (have 2)
2	CR3: remaining CRX variants, then verify the 17 popular CR3 bodies	+6.5	25–45	~0.19	samples per body (raw.pixls.us has most)
3	Verify popular Nikon, Fujifilm, Canon CR2 and Pentax bodies (one CC0 file each, fix what breaks)	+2.0	8–15	~0.17	public samples
4	Nikon packed 14-bit under a compressed tag (Z 6II uncompressed, #769)	+0.2	1–2	~0.13	PR #671 exists
5	Sony DSLR-A200…A390 / A850 12-bit compressed ARW	+0.4	3–6	~0.08	samples on raw.pixls.us
6	Pre-X FinePix RAF	+0.6	4–8	~0.08	samples
7	Sony A100 and DSC-F828 regression (#702)	+0.1	1–2	~0.07	samples on raw.pixls.us
8	Canon CRW (2000–2004 bodies)	+1.2 by the uniform tail weight, far less by real use	6–12	≤ 0.1	samples
9	Nikon HE / HE★ NEF (Z 8, Z 9, Z 6III, Z f, Z50II, Z5II set to HE)	+1.1	20–40	~0.04	a pure-Rust JPEG XS decoder
10	Compressed SRW, Hasselblad 3FR, IIQ, X3F, MRW, KDC, ERF, DCR, MEF, GPR	+0.6 together	45–85	~0.01	samples; low use

Beyond decoding:

Gap	Hours	Needs
Measured colour calibration for the ~60 popular bodies, Kelvin WB, render-fidelity suite against Lightroom	80–150	chart shots per camera (a human with cameras) or licensable measured data
Lens profile database of our own (fitting tools, data format, top 100 lenses), maker-note vignetting / CA	40–80	calibration shots (a human with lenses)
Demosaic and highlight quality measured against Lightroom; X-Trans AI denoise	15–30
Total RAW	255–480 h (decoding list above 120–220 h; ~60% parallelizes)

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-10 (later)	major	Model-by-model measurement against Adobe's published list (1,446 models: 234 verified, 943 unverified, 233 preview, 36 unsupported); docs/raw/ data and re-measure script; use-weighted share 84% (40% on verified bodies); variant matrix; colour and lens sections with scores; ranked next cameras; RAW readiness ~56% from written parts
2026-10-10	major	Created: formats, makers, demosaic, colour and lens checklists; target counts from the installed Lightroom 9.6 bundle listing