Fujifilm, Apple cooperate to improve X-Trans sensor support

Being an innovator in sensor technology is a great way to attract customers to your products, giving them the option of something that's genuinely different to your rivals' offerings. As Fujifilm has discovered, though, it can also leave you in a rather difficult situation when it comes to third-party support for your cameras. Cameras based around Fuji's X-Trans CMOS image sensor, in particular, have proven troublesome due to the major difference in their demosaicing algorithms when compared to the more typical Bayer-filtered sensor, leaving owners of X-Trans cameras bemoaning the image quality provided by third party apps.

Fuji has been hard at work to improve the situation, however, and things are definitely looking up for owners of X-Trans cameras. Back at the start of the month, Adobe shipped an update to Photoshop Camera Raw and Lightroom that incorporated much-improved demosaicing algorithms for X-Trans cameras, with assistance from Fujifilm. Now, Fuji has cooperated with Apple to get raw image support added for for all four X-Trans cameras in current versions of both Aperture and iPhoto, courtesy of a Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update for Mac OS X.

 

Apple's latest RAW Compatbility Update adds support for cameras based on the Fujifilm X-Trans image sensor, such as the Fuji X100S.

After the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 4.05 is installed, both Aperture 3 and iPhoto '11 will now be able to handle images from the Fujifilm X-Pro1, X-E1, X100S, and X20. More details and the six megabyte updater download can be found on Apple's website. The updater requires use of Mac OS X 10.7.5 Lion or 10.8.2 Mountain Lion, at the minimum.