printworks

A command-line tool that converts camera RAW photos (CR2, NEF, ARW, RAF, RW2, ORF, PEF, DNG, and more) into full-resolution JPEGs.

RAW decoding and the develop pipeline (demosaic, white balance, color space conversion, tone curve) are handled by rawloader + imagepipe — pure Rust, no native build toolchain required. EXIF metadata (camera, lens, exposure, date, GPS) is read from the RAW file and copied into the output JPEG.

Install / build

From crates.io

cargo install printworks

From source

cargo build --release

The binary is written to target/release/printworks.

Usage

Convert RAW files to JPEG

printworks convert <FILES OR DIRS...> [OPTIONS]

# A single file, written alongside the source
printworks convert IMG_1234.CR2

# A folder, recursively, into a separate output directory
printworks convert ~/Photos/2024-Trip -r -o ~/Photos/2024-Trip/jpg

# With adjustments
printworks convert IMG_1234.CR2 --exposure 0.5 --wb daylight --rotate none

Flag	Default	Description
-o, --output <DIR>	alongside each source file	Directory to write JPEGs into; the input's relative directory structure is mirrored underneath it
-r, --recursive	off	Recurse into subdirectories of any directory input
--quality <1-100>	90	JPEG quality
-j, --jobs <N>	number of CPUs	Parallel worker threads
--overwrite	off	Overwrite an existing output file instead of skipping it
--exposure <EV>	0.0	Exposure compensation in stops, applied on top of the camera default
--wb <VALUE>	as-shot	White balance: as-shot, a preset (daylight, cloudy, shade, tungsten, fluorescent, flash), or <temp_kelvin>:<tint> (e.g. 5000:1.1)
--rotate <VALUE>	auto	auto uses the orientation recorded in the RAW file, none ignores it, or force 90/180/270
--ext <jpg|jpeg>	jpg	Output file extension

Per-file errors (a corrupt or unsupported RAW) are logged and skipped rather than aborting the whole batch. The command exits non-zero if any file failed.

Inspect a RAW file's metadata

printworks info <FILES OR DIRS...> [OPTIONS]

printworks info IMG_1234.CR2
printworks info ~/Photos/2024-Trip -r --json

Prints camera make/model, dimensions, orientation, and shooting parameters (lens, exposure time, aperture, ISO, focal length, capture date, GPS if present) without converting anything. --json prints a machine-readable array instead of text.

Global flags

-v / -vv increase log verbosity; -q, --quiet suppresses non-error output. Both apply to either subcommand.

Examples

samples/raw has a handful of real RAW files (Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, Panasonic RW2, Sony ARW — see ATTRIBUTION.md for licensing) so you can try the commands above without hunting down a RAW file first:

# Inspect all four without converting anything
printworks info samples/raw -r

# Convert them all into samples/raw/jpg
printworks convert samples/raw -r -o samples/raw/jpg

# Convert a single file with adjustments
printworks convert samples/raw/canon-rebelxt.CR2 --exposure 0.5 --wb daylight

printworks info samples/raw -r prints, among other things:

samples/raw/canon-rebelxt.CR2
  camera:      Canon Rebel XT
  dimensions:  3516x2328
  orientation: Rotate270
  exposure:    1/640 s
  aperture:    f/5.6
  iso:         100
  focal len:   10.0 mm
  captured:    2008:05:25 18:32:29

Supported RAW formats

Any format rawloader can decode: ARW, CR2, CRW, DCR, DCS, DNG, ERF, IIQ, KDC, MEF, MOS, MRW, NEF, NRW, ORF, PEF, RAF, RW2, SRW, X3F, and a few others. Coverage depends on rawloader's internal camera database — an unsupported camera/mode combination fails with a clear per-file error rather than a crash.

Development

cargo build
cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo fmt

License

printworks is licensed under Apache-2.0.

It statically links against imagepipe (LGPL-3.0-only) and rawloader (LGPL-2.1); both permit this as long as their license terms are satisfied, which does not require printworks itself to be LGPL/GPL. See THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md for the required notices and the bundled license texts in licenses/.