I admit that I never got as far as that in the first viewing – I was so appalled at the (untrue) sweeping statements earlier such as Microsoft’s codec is “for 32 and 64 bit Windows” and “for all the cameras you may have had or may have now”, that I stopped the video the first time around in disgust.

The files are first converted to JPEG then the JPEG is edited, so it’s a convert-then-edit operation. There is a “Make a Copy” button in WLPG that is used for this purpose and that you must click before performing any change. They made it clear that the original raw file was never modified and this behavior is independent of the actual codec used, FPV’s, Ardfry’s, manufacturer’s or theirs.

However, one thing intrigues me. They show that they are able to use WLPG to edit RAW files directly. I’m using your FastPictureViewer Codec pack, but WLPG insists that I need to make a JPEG copy first and edit that. Are Microsoft doing some tricksy things with their RAW codec that aren’t available to third parties, or have I simply not got WLPG set up correctly?

Which is the key point: Microsoft Raw Codec does not support IWICDevelopRaw (as evidenced by the “not implemented” error code) which means the user has no control whatsoever over the conversion process. The tool crashing because of that error is anecdotal. Also anecdotal: the implementation of this interface always was a requirement for raw WIC codecs: double standards, two sets of rules?

>do you know what programs would use the IWICDevelopeRaw interface

None, as far as I know. As I wrote in the article, the primary use for WIC codecs as of today is to provide Explorer thumbnails and previews, and to surface metadata to Explorer and to the Search Indexer. Our codecs are optimized for this use case.

Incidentally, all our raw codecs do implement IWICDevelopRaw and thus would allow some level of control to an application using that interface (only exposure compensation is available at this time, but I could wire up more controls), when our codecs are set to full render mode.

Last time I checked, implementations of IWICDevelopRaw in manufacturer codecs (Nikon and Canon, not to mention them) was either missing or very bogus, going from black images to crashes.

Thomas Knoll may be right an no one bothered so far, not even Microsoft in their released codecs. All Photo Gallery does is a blind conversion, then it let the users work on the 8 bit RGB data, with all camera settings and effects lost in the process: the camera-made JPEGs are actually a better starting point!