Undo 16:9-crop in RAW (Sony Alpha)

[Ambroos]

Hi there!

I usually shoot in 16:9 with my Camera (Sony Alpha A200) (in RAW ofcourse) and later on pull them through Lightroom. Now, sometimes I wished I didn't shoot in 16:9. Now, I know that the full image is still there somewhere. When I take a look at the files with Lightroom or with the proper RAW driver from Sony on my PC I see the image as it's meant to be, all filters (WB, sharpness, brightness, blabla) applied. But when I use the (rather squishy) Picasa Photo Viewer I just get the really RAW image. No adjustments at all, exactly as it came through the lens, but with the full aspect ratio. So all the data is still there.

Any idea on how to uncrop some pictures with Lightroom?

Example of how it looks in both Apps:

* If any of you wants a RAW sample file, just PM me and I'll link you one. They're kinda big!

[BLEHINATOR!]

I tried to duplicate your situation with my A100, but it doesnt have a 16:9 shooting mode. So i cropped an image in lightroom, and it will always show as cropped in lightroom. Open the cropped file in photoshop (not importing from lightroom into photoshop) and it shows up 100%.

If you havent already tried, open up the file thats cropped in lightroom, go to the develop stage, then click on the crop tool. What happened with my cropped files is that it will show the full area of the image, with only the cropped portion highlighted. With the crop tool in use, hit the reset button. Should show the full file then.

If not, link me to your sample raw file.

[Ambroos]

Thanks for your reply!

It doesn't show up in the Crop tool in Lightroom..

http://localhostr.com/files/c977df/DSC05212.ARW

Here you go!

[BLEHINATOR!]

I cant seem to get lightroom to display the out of 16:9 frame area. The only way i could do it is to open the ARW up in the Sony Image Data Converter SR and export the image from that into lightroom. Sony Image Data Converter SR should be bundled with your camera, but I would grab it from the Sony site to make sure you have the latest version. You may need to define lightroom as a program you can export data too within Sony IDC. Its a pain to add another program to the post processing stage, but at least its a free program.

Let me know how this goes.

[Ambroos]

Thanks for the hint! I tried it and Image Data Converter SR can indeed do the job! Shame you lose your RAW-stuff, but oh well, it's just for those occasional moments... Maybe, since you don't save space after all it's better if I do the crop in Lightroom myself aftwerwards.

Thank for your time!

[BLEHINATOR!]

If you think about it, shooting without a crop is easier to adjust to 16:9 in post processing, than it is to go the other way. You dont necessarily "loose" your raw stuff (if i am interpreting what you mean correctly), since exporting from Sony IDC to Lightroom will export it as a TIF file, which retains all EXIF data as well as being 16 bit per channel for all your extra stops of lighting and colour information. The big disadvantage i can see is that with the ARW file that you provided, it takes up 11.1mb of space, whereas the TIF conversion takes up 57.4mb.

All in all, i think you're going in the right direction to be shooting without the crop :)

[hiili]

Just in case that you still need this, or if someone in the same situation finds this thread: You can redefine the effective crop directly in the raw file by using exiftool (http://www.sno.phy.q...~phil/exiftool/). For example, the following command removes any crop from an image taken with a 3648 x 2736 pixel camera:

exiftool infile.orf -AspectFrame="0 0 3647 2735" -o outfile.orf

Works at least for Olympus XZ-1 + Lightroom 3.4. It also seems possible to remove the crop directly in-place from a raw file that belongs to a Lightroom catalog without losing any develop settings (I tested this only very briefly, however).

[Andre]

Here's why it happens. RAW files store JPEG preview for fast viewing. And apparently that preview is in 16:9. When you process the actual RAW data in Lightroom or any other RAW tool, it uses the actual sensor data which is not 16:9.

Here's an example using your file previewing JPEG and RAW data in the same viewer.

RAW: http://i.imgur.com/dWGil.jpg

JPEG preview: http://i.imgur.com/UpYkT.jpg

With that said, if you shoot RAW then don't shoot in any crop modes. Either crop and process afterwards, because that's what RAW is for, or just shoot JPEG if you really need 16:9 ratio straight out of camera.

[crazzy88ss]

why not shoot in the normal crop format and then crop the ones you want into 16:9?

-_-