RAF to PNG

Fujifilm's X-Trans sensors use a six-by-six colour filter pattern instead of the usual two-by-two, and a converter that treats it as an ordinary Bayer array leaves mushy detail and maze-like artefacts in fine texture. This page decodes RAF files with the demosaic written for X-Trans and stores the result as PNG, so none of that detail is then thrown away by JPEG compression.

Drop RAF images here

RAF files — or any of PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, BMP, ICO, TIFF, GIF or camera raw (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RW2). Everything runs on this device.

Or paste an image from the clipboard.

Your images never leave this device. They are decoded and re-encoded by your own browser, and the security policy on every page blocks this site from sending them anywhere.

Convert to

Lossless, keeps transparency, universally supported, larger than modern formats.

Quality

PNG is lossless — it stores every pixel exactly, so there is nothing to trade away.

Size

Images keep their original dimensions.

Rotate

Images are turned upright from their own orientation data, and left that way.

Transparency

Kept. PNG stores a full alpha channel, so cut-outs and soft edges come through exactly.

Metadata

Exif is carried across where both formats can hold it. Nothing currently in the queue has any.

Sensor detail

Decodes at the file's full resolution, interpolating missing colours when it has a colour filter array. Files already holding colour pixels need no demosaicing.

White balance

The value your camera recorded when the shutter fired — what you saw on the back of the camera.

Camera, lens, exposure and capture time are written into the PNG when those fields are present. The file details show whether GPS data exists, but coordinates are deliberately not written, and colour comes out as sRGB.

What happens to your image

File size depends mostly on the image itself.

What is preserved and what is lost converting RAF to PNG
Property	Outcome
Transparency	Preserved: RAF images have no transparency to lose.
Image quality	Preserved: Unchanged. Both formats are lossless, so every pixel comes through exactly.
Colour	Partly preserved: LibRaw develops the sensor data into eight-bit sRGB. The output uses that colour space; a source colour profile is not copied into the output.
Exif metadata	Partly preserved: When metadata is switched on, the camera, lens, exposure and capture time recorded in the raw file are assembled into a standard block and written into the PNG. Switch it off to remove them. The GPS position is shown to you in the file details and deliberately never written.
Orientation	Preserved: Applied to the pixels, and the tag is reset to upright afterwards so nothing rotates the image a second time.

Why PNG suits an X-Trans file

The point of X-Trans is fine detail: the irregular pattern breaks up moiré, so Fujifilm can leave out the anti-aliasing filter. JPEG compression works hardest on exactly that kind of texture. PNG keeps every decoded pixel exactly, so what the demosaic resolved is what you get.

Lossless here means lossless from the decoder onwards. The RAF holds twelve or fourteen bits per photosite; the PNG holds eight bits per channel in sRGB, with white balance, the colour matrix and a tone curve already applied. If the camera wrote a lossy compressed RAF, what it discarded is gone before the decode starts.

The X-Trans demosaic, and what it costs

The algorithm works out the local direction of detail and interpolates along it rather than across it — the approach the raw-processing community settled on for X-Trans — and it is several times more expensive than the Bayer equivalent. A 26-megapixel file takes several seconds at full resolution, and longer in some browsers than others. That is arithmetic, not a stall: progress is per file and real, and any file can be cancelled.

Half resolution skips that interpolation entirely, which makes it dramatically faster for X-Trans rather than marginally so. It produces a quarter of the pixels, still more than most screens need.

If the sensor data cannot be decoded at all, the camera's embedded preview is used only as a labelled fallback, and the row, the result and the ZIP manifest all say so.

Fujifilm colour, without film simulations

Provia, Velvia, Classic Chrome and the other film simulations are applied by the camera when it writes a JPEG. They are not in the raw data, so the PNG is neutral and will not look like the picture on the back of the camera. What does come across is the colour matrix for your sensor and the white balance the camera recorded.

Expect a big file. The X-T30 II test file this page is checked against is a 19 MB RAF at 6246 × 4170, and it becomes a 42 MB PNG. For sharing or viewing, the RAF to JPG page gives a far smaller file that looks the same on a screen.

If something goes wrong

Full-resolution conversion takes several seconds a file.

The X-Trans demosaic, described above. It is the most expensive interpolation in this tool.

What to do: Use half resolution for anything that does not need every pixel. Otherwise start the batch and leave it running.

On a phone, the PNG comes out at half resolution.

A 26-megapixel X-Trans decode needs more working memory than a mobile browser tab can be relied on to get, so it is decoded at half resolution rather than attempted and lost.

What to do: The row says when this has happened. Convert on a desktop for full resolution.

A file from an older EXR or SuperCCD compact behaves differently.

Those sensors use a rotated array rather than X-Trans and produce images with unusual proportions.

What to do: Support varies by model. When the file is recognised, the queue reports the sensor layout and output dimensions; otherwise it fails with a message.

Questions

Is the PNG sixteen-bit?

No. Everything after the decoder in this tool works at eight bits per channel, so a sixteen-bit PNG would be larger without holding anything more. For sixteen-bit output, use a raw editor.

Will the PNG match Fujifilm's own converter?

Not exactly. Different X-Trans demosaicing algorithms trade resolution, colour artefacts and noise differently, and Fujifilm's software also applies its film simulations. This is a well-regarded independent implementation, rendered neutrally.

Are the camera and lens details kept?

With metadata on, the camera, lens, exposure and capture time read from the RAF are written into the PNG's Exif chunk. GPS coordinates are shown in the file details but never written.