Just tried YARC, and I love it! My (perhaps shortsighted) reluctance to use RAW was in part due to wondering how I would archive. I had already begun using Thumber for extracting EXIF into Excel worksheets and generating web indices for my own use, intending later to burn it all on CDR. Had no solution for how to do this with RAW.
YARC, with a little help from a utility friend, does it. I use YARC (which works flawlessly and transparently as near as I can tell) to, among other things, extract the JPEG from the crw and thm. This JPEG also contains the EXIF data! Better yet, if I crop, resize, whatever, the TIFF or JPEG that is based on the CRW, I can retain the EXIF data and put it in the new JPEG. This means I can integrate the JPEG that I create by post-processing into the rest of my files, and have Thumber automatically include it with the others in extracting EXIF info for my spreadsheets, as well as include it in my web index.
To get the EXIF from the 640x480 JPEG extracted by YARC, use exifcopy.exe. This is another MSDOS command line utility that is almost as brainless to use as YARC in its default mode. Just go to the MSDOS window, then
[path-to-exifcopy]exifcopy source.jpg destination.jpg
and the EXIF data is copied into the post-processed file. You can get exifcopy and a few other utilities at
Hugh Thomas web page at bigpond.com
The engineer in me says EXIF data gets lost in copies because it belongs only with the original. My approach associates the original EXIF with the (post-processed) copy. But that is exactly what the photographer in me wants to do. I can add comments using Thumber documenting post-processing, and the world remains honest.
Thanks for checking into these nitpicks. I'm really just trying for the inside track on Yarc, Inc.'s IPO .
