RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

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tomczak
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RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

Post by tomczak »

When a RAW file is opened in RAW dialog, clicking OK/Apply will create a sidecar-workflow file, which stores all the RAW developing parameters. This is great, since it makes the RAW developing parameters reproducible (i.e. one can develop a system, keep all the RAW files as Masters and process them again to the same specs later).

The sidecar file is, however, overwritten silently if it's opened again and the RAW parameters change. I found that I unknowingly overwritten a valuable sidecar files by merely experimenting with the RAW again.

Would it make any sense to make it transparent (i.e. ask the user if the sidecar file, that already exists, is to be overwritten)?
Cheers.
Maciej Tomczak
Phototramp.com
den
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Re: RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

Post by den »

A similar occurence happened to me as well and every since when wanting to save a specific RAW Dialog wfl file, I have gone back to the "Open dialog - show All Files" and renamed it, taking it out of the 'silent over-write' RAW Dialog workflow sequence...

...rather than just a warning, perhaps a 'file save as' feature would useful as well...
Dieter Mayr
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Re: RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

Post by Dieter Mayr »

The "Save as" would be especially useful when saving "general purpose" *.wfl files.
tomczak
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Re: RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

Post by tomczak »

You can right-click on an opened image (developed RAW, for example) in History, and Save Workflow - that will include RAW with any other transformations done up to this point in History. Is that what you wanted, Dieter?

I was mostly concerned with silent sidecar overwrite that RAW dialog is doing. For example, I treat RAW as masters, then develop it in RAW dialog, then apply some other transformations to it to prepare the file, and I save the sidecar/workflow file with the RAW when I save the output image so that I can replicate or change it later. If I open the RAW again with the sidecar, I can either repeat what I've done or apply some modifications to the workflow transformations (but not to the RAW settings), and then either overwrite the old workflow, save a second one or discard the second one.

But once I inadvertently open the same RAW in a RAW dialog and click OK/Apply, the sidecar with all it's settings is overwritten without me noticing it.
Maciej Tomczak
Phototramp.com
tomczak
Posts: 1367
Joined: April 25th, 2009, 12:56 am
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Re: RAW sidecar files and silent overwriting

Post by tomczak »

Well, there is already a way of adjusting the RAW settings even if the files as an associated sidcar workflow thats includes other transformations, without overwriting those transformations:
- right-click on the image which has a sidecar --> Open Sidecar File in Workflow Window
- drag the same image to the workflow window
- click on the RAW widget, make changes, click OK
- in Workflow window click on Options/Save --> the sidecar file is replaced with the new one: RAW settings adjusted, other transformations stay the same.

I have a question though: in History window if an image is right-clicked and Redo Transformation chosen, it works for all un-grayed transformations, except for the RAW. Is that the way it should be - intuitively I expected it work the same way as widgets in a workflow.

Cheers.
Maciej Tomczak
Phototramp.com
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