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Pellicle Help

Pellicle Help
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RAW File Support

Pellicle supports all major RAW formats through two decoding paths: Apple's ImageIO framework and LibRaw.

Supported Formats

Most common RAW formats are supported, including CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, DNG, and many more. If macOS can decode it, Pellicle can display it.

For formats where ImageIO produces poor or missing thumbnails (some older Nikon NEF files, for example), Pellicle falls through to LibRaw for thumbnail extraction or a full half-resolution sensor decode.

Viewing RAW Files

In the detail view, press Space to toggle between the embedded JPEG preview and a full RAW decode. The JPEG preview loads instantly and is what the camera produced at capture time. The RAW decode takes longer but shows the actual sensor data.

The grid view always shows thumbnails — either extracted from the RAW file or rendered from the sensor data, depending on what's available.

Thumbnail Pipeline

When indexing a RAW file, Pellicle tries these sources in order:

  1. ImageIO — fastest, uses Apple's built-in RAW support.
  2. LibRaw embedded thumbnail — if ImageIO fails or produces a very small image (under 512px), LibRaw extracts the embedded JPEG.
  3. LibRaw full decode — as a last resort, LibRaw does a half-resolution sensor decode. This is slower but guarantees a usable thumbnail for any supported format.