Support for Lumix G9ii RAW files

[GuyHammond]

Hi Nik

I have recently bought a Panasonic Lumix G9ii and ran off a few shots just to see hoe they looked. However, I’m getting the following error message when I try to view the RAWs in Nitro: “Unable to load the image. This image may be damaged or otherwise not be supported by Nitro.”

I get a similar message with Apple Photos: “Cannot Start Editing. Photos cannot edit this image because it uses an unsupported format.”

Looking at Apple’s support page for camera RAW formats supported by iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, I can see that the G9ii isn’t on there, only the previous G9 model, a vastly different camera. Obviously this is disappointing, the camera has been out for around 10 months now and it never occurred to me that there might be an issue.

Have you any plans to provide support for this format or are you bound by Apple’s timescale?

[Nik Bhatt]

The G9 II will be supported in the next update of Nitro. The problem was that the G9 II and the GH6 use a new format for storing the camera data. As usual, Panasonic (like other camera companies) does not document the format or help 3rd parties decode them. It takes time to reverse engineer the format and add support.

Fortunately, I am not constrained by Apple’s camera release schedule because I have the ability to extend Apple’s RAW decoder (which is unique to Nitro and RAW Power).

[GuyHammond]

That’s great Nik, thanks!

[GuyHammond]

Thanks for adding support for the G9ii, I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. I can now open all my new RAWs in Nitro which is great.

One thing I have noticed though is that Nitro doesn’t seem to fully recognise images taken in High Resolution mode. I ran off a few shots just for fun but noticed that in Nitro the 100 Mp hi-res image doesn’t look any sharper than the standard 25 Mp image. Furthermore, a 50 Mp Jpeg actually looks sharper than the 100 Mp file. For comparison I also viewed them in SilkyPix (which Panasonic include a license for) and the hi-res image is noticeably better than the others.

Is this something that you would need to add support for separately?

[Nik Bhatt]

Email support@gentlemencoders.com. I will need files to study.

[GuyHammond]

I have emailed you some screenshots which I think illustrate the issue. If you want the actual files I’ll have to upload them via iCloud or similar – they are too large to email.

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