-->I'm sure Nikon has patented their AWB method, it would be foolish to think otherwise. But what they're preventing is a competitor from leveraging their patented AWB method in a competing software product without having to license it.
Well, no, not really.
What Nikon is doing is encrypting *the result* of their AWB method. It's just a number stored in a metadata tag. If you resave the NEF out of NC, the WB tag is no longer encrypted, so it's hard to see this as an attempt to protect any vital intellectual property. They're encrypting the As Shot WB tag, and doing so in a lame fashion that's easy to crack—witness Bibble and dcraw, for starters.
I'm tolerably certain that Adobe would be quite happy to license Nikon's SDK if it were useful, but it fails to provide functionality that Camera Raw needs, like, for example, multithreading. All that the SDK would let you do is build something equally lame as NC.
But this really isn't about a pi**ing match between Nikon and Adobe. Tom Knoll posting to the user-to-user forum on a sunday morning is not in any way an "Adobe announcement." When Bibble announced over a month ago that they'd cracked the encryption in the D2X white balance tag, nobody made a fuss. When Tom Knoll says he doesn't want to do that because Adobe has rules against their programmers, whether employees or freelancers (he's not an employee) doing any form of decryption, the conspiracy theorists suddenly come out of the woodwork and the rumor mill goes into overdrive.
What this is about is standards, the lack thereof, and how their presence or absence benefits or fails to benefit photographers. All this does is to put a not-very-effective stumbling block in the way of photographers who want to use a raw converter other than Nikon Capture. Nikon has every right to do that, but it's hard to see how it helps their customers, and makes me glad that I'm no longer one of them, though I was for over 20 years. Nikon makes great cameras and lenses, lackluster Windows software, and Mac software that's just inexcusably bad. I honestly believe that everyone would be better off if Nikon competed on the basis of what it was good at. I'd continue to believe that if there were no such thing as Camera Raw or Photoshop.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
My guess is Canon has already performed autopsies on several Nikon D2x cameras and reverse engineered both Nikon Capture and NEF. Nikon has most likely done to the same to the Canon 1D and 1Ds mk2.
-- Robert.
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Inasmuch as their respective white balance systems are totally different from the ground up, and inasmuch as they clearly have no intention of copying each other's system, I would doubt they've spent any money and effort reverse engineering something they each think they do better.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Nikon's Press Release of today (unofficial) uses alot of big words and double speak to try to cover up the reluctance that they have to making the workflow of the faithfull customers that they have more productive. They seem a bit confused into thingking that the NC that they make is useful. It is slow and not well organized and it is generally lacking.
NIKON please work with software makers and give up on your efforts at NC. You make a great camera but your software is lousy.
DITTO Bruce's comments above.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
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