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Programme for International Student Assessment

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition.

The results of the 2022 data collection were released in December 2023.

Influence and impact
PISA, and similar international standardised assessments of educational attainment are increasingly used in the process of education policymaking at both national and international levels.

PISA was conceived to set in a wider context the information provided by national monitoring of education system performance through regular assessments within a common, internationally agreed framework; by investigating relationships between student learning and other factors they can "offer insights into sources of variation in performances within and between countries".

Until the 1990s, few European countries used national tests. In the 1990s, ten countries / regions introduced standardised assessment, and since the early 2000s, ten more followed suit. By 2009, only five European education systems had no national student assessments.

The impact of these international standardised assessments in the field of educational policy has been significant, in terms of the creation of new knowledge, changes in assessment policy, and external influence over national educational policy more broadly.

Creation of new knowledge
Data from international standardised assessments can be useful in research on causal factors within or across education systems. Mons notes that the databases generated by large-scale international assessments have made it possible to carry out inventories and comparisons of education systems on an unprecedented scale* on themes ranging from the conditions for learning mathematics and reading, to institutional autonomy and admissions policies. They allow typologies to be developed that can be used for comparative statistical analyses of education performance indicators, thereby identifying the consequences of different policy choices. They have generated new knowledge about education: PISA findings have challenged deeply embedded educational practices, such as the early tracking of students into vocational or academic pathways.

 * 79 countries and economies participated in the 2018 data collection.

Barroso and de Carvalho find that PISA provides a common reference connecting academic research in education and the political realm of public policy, operating as a mediator between different strands of knowledge from the realm of education and public policy. However, although the key findings from comparative assessments are widely shared in the research community the knowledge they create does not necessarily fit with government reform agendas; this leads to some inappropriate uses of assessment data.

Changes in national assessment policy
Emerging research suggests that international standardised assessments are having an impact on national assessment policy and practice. PISA is being integrated into national policies and practices on assessment, evaluation, curriculum standards and performance targets; its assessment frameworks and instruments are being used as best-practice models for improving national assessments; many countries have explicitly incorporated and emphasise PISA-like competencies in revised national standards and curricula; others use PISA data to complement national data and validate national results against an international benchmark.

External influence over national educational policy
PISA may influence national education policy choices in a variety of ways. Participation in international assessments like PISA has been linked to significant education policy changes and outcomes, such as higher student enrollments and education reforms. However, critics have argued that participation could lead to undesirable outcomes, such as higher repetition rates and narrowing of curricula. The impact of PISA may also vary according to the specific country context.

Policy-makers in most participating countries see PISA as an important indicator of system performance; PISA reports can define policy problems and set the agenda for national policy debate; policymakers seem to accept PISA as a valid and reliable instrument for internationally benchmarking system performance and changes over time; most countries—irrespective of whether they performed above, at, or below the average PISA score—have begun policy reforms in response to PISA reports.

Against this, impact on national education systems varies markedly. For example, in Germany, the results of the first PISA assessment caused the so-called 'PISA shock': a questioning of previously accepted educational policies; in a state marked by jealously guarded regional policy differences, it led ultimately to an agreement by all Länder to introduce common national standards and even an institutionalised structure to ensure that they were observed. In Hungary, by comparison, which shared similar conditions to Germany, PISA results have not led to significant changes in educational policy.

Because many countries have set national performance targets based on their relative rank or absolute PISA score, PISA assessments have increased the influence of their (non-elected) commissioning body, the OECD, as an international education monitor and policy actor, which implies an important degree of 'policy transfer' from the international to the national level; PISA in particular is having "an influential normative effect on the direction of national education policies". Thus, it is argued that the use of international standardised assessments has led to a shift towards international, external accountability for national system performance; Rey contends that PISA surveys, portrayed as objective, third-party diagnoses of education systems, actually serve to promote specific orientations on educational issues.

National policy actors refer to high-performing PISA countries to "help legitimise and justify their intended reform agenda within contested national policy debates". PISA data can be "used to fuel long-standing debates around pre-existing conflicts or rivalries between different policy options, such as in the French Community of Belgium". In such instances, PISA assessment data are used selectively: in public discourse governments often only use superficial features of PISA surveys such as country rankings and not the more detailed analyses. Rey (2010:145, citing Greger, 2008) notes that often the real results of PISA assessments are ignored as policymakers selectively refer to data in order to legitimise policies introduced for other reasons.

In addition, PISA's international comparisons can be used to justify reforms with which the data themselves have no connection; in Portugal, for example, PISA data were used to justify new arrangements for teacher assessment (based on inferences that were not justified by the assessments and data themselves); they also fed the government's discourse about the issue of pupils repeating a year, (which, according to research, fails to improve student results). In Finland, the country's PISA results (that are in other countries deemed to be excellent) were used by Ministers to promote new policies for 'gifted' students. Such uses and interpretations often assume causal relationships that cannot legitimately be based upon PISA data which would normally require fuller investigation through qualitative in-depth studies and longitudinal surveys based on mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, which politicians are often reluctant to fund.

Recent decades have witnessed an expansion in the uses of PISA and similar assessments, from assessing students' learning, to connecting "the educational realm (their traditional remit) with the political realm". This raises the question of whether PISA data are sufficiently robust to bear the weight of the major policy decisions that are being based upon them, for, according to Breakspear, PISA data have "come to increasingly shape, define and evaluate the key goals of the national / federal education system". This implies that those who set the PISA tests – e.g. in choosing the content to be assessed and not assessed – are in a position of considerable power to set the terms of the education debate, and to orient educational reform in many countries around the globe.

Framework
PISA stands in a tradition of international school studies, undertaken since the late 1950s by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Much of PISA's methodology follows the example of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, started in 1995), which in turn was much influenced by the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading component of PISA is inspired by the IEA's Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

PISA aims to test literacy the competence of students in three fields: reading, mathematics, science on an indefinite scale.

The PISA mathematics literacy test asks students to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve problems set in real-world contexts. To solve the problems students must activate a number of mathematical competencies as well as a broad range of mathematical content knowledge. TIMSS, on the other hand, measures more traditional classroom content such as an understanding of fractions and decimals and the relationship between them (curriculum attainment). PISA claims to measure education's application to real-life problems and lifelong learning (workforce knowledge).

In the reading test, "OECD/PISA does not measure the extent to which 15-year-old students are fluent readers or how competent they are at word recognition tasks or spelling." Instead, they should be able to "construct, extend and reflect on the meaning of what they have read across a wide range of continuous and non-continuous texts."

PISA also assesses students in innovative domains. In 2012 and 2015 in addition to reading, mathematics and science, they were tested in collaborative problem solving. In 2018 the additional innovative domain was global competence.

Implementation
PISA is sponsored, governed, and coordinated by the OECD, but paid for by participating countries.

Sampling
The students tested by PISA are aged between 15 years and 3 months and 16 years and 2 months at the beginning of the assessment period. The school year pupils are in is not taken into consideration. Only students at school are tested, not home-schoolers. In PISA 2006, however, several countries also used a grade-based sample of students. This made it possible to study how age and school year interact.

To fulfill OECD requirements, each country must draw a sample of at least 5,000 students. In small countries like Iceland and Luxembourg, where there are fewer than 5,000 students per year, an entire age cohort is tested. Some countries used much larger samples than required to allow comparisons between regions.

Test

Each student takes a two-hour computer based test. Part of the test is multiple-choice and part involves fuller answers. There are six and a half hours of assessment material, but each student is not tested on all the parts. Following the cognitive test, participating students spend nearly one more hour answering a questionnaire on their background including learning habits, motivation, and family. School directors fill in a questionnaire describing school demographics, funding, etc. In 2012 the participants were, for the first time in the history of large-scale testing and assessments, offered a new type of problem, i.e. interactive (complex) problems requiring exploration of a novel virtual device.

In selected countries, PISA started experimentation with computer adaptive testing.

National add-ons
Countries are allowed to combine PISA with complementary national tests.

Germany does this in a very extensive way: On the day following the international test, students take a national test called PISA-E (E=Ergänzung=complement). Test items of PISA-E are closer to TIMSS than to PISA. While only about 5,000 German students participate in the international and the national test, another 45,000 take the national test only. This large sample is needed to allow an analysis by federal states. Following a clash about the interpretation of 2006 results, the OECD warned Germany that it might withdraw the right to use the "PISA" label for national tests.

Data scaling
From the beginning, PISA has been designed with one particular method of data analysis in mind. Since students work on different test booklets, raw scores must be 'scaled' to allow meaningful comparisons. Scores are thus scaled so that the OECD average in each domain (mathematics, reading and science) is 500 and the standard deviation is 100. This is true only for the initial PISA cycle when the scale was first introduced, though, subsequent cycles are linked to the previous cycles through IRT scale linking methods.

This generation of proficiency estimates is done using a latent regression extension of the Rasch model, a model of item response theory (IRT), also known as conditioning model or population model. The proficiency estimates are provided in the form of so-called plausible values, which allow unbiased estimates of differences between groups. The latent regression, together with the use of a Gaussian prior probability distribution of student competencies allows estimation of the proficiency distributions of groups of participating students. The scaling and conditioning procedures are described in nearly identical terms in the Technical Reports of PISA 2000, 2003, 2006. NAEP and TIMSS use similar scaling methods.

Ranking results
All PISA results are tabulated by country; recent PISA cycles have separate provincial or regional results for some countries. Most public attention concentrates on just one outcome: the mean scores of countries and their rankings of countries against one another. In the official reports, however, country-by-country rankings are given not as simple league tables but as cross tables indicating for each pair of countries whether or not mean score differences are statistically significant (unlikely to be due to random fluctuations in student sampling or in item functioning). In favorable cases, a difference of 9 points is sufficient to be considered significant.

PISA never combines mathematics, science and reading domain scores into an overall score. However, commentators have sometimes combined test results from all three domains into an overall country ranking. Such meta-analysis is not endorsed by the OECD, although official summaries sometimes use scores from a testing cycle's principal domain as a proxy for overall student ability.

PISA 2022 ranking summary
The results of PISA 2022 were presented on 5 December 2023, which included data for around 700,000 participating students in 81 countries and economies, with Singapore emerging as the top performer in all categories.

Both Lebanon and the Chinese provinces/municipalities of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang were participants in these edition, but their results were not published as they were not able to fully collect data because of COVID restrictions.

Because of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, only 18 of 27 Ukrainian regions had their data collected, thus the results are not representative of the following regions: Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

China
China's participation in the 2012 test was limited to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau as separate entities. In 2012, Shanghai participated for the second time, again topping the rankings in all three subjects, as well as improving scores in the subjects compared to the 2009 tests. Shanghai's score of 613 in mathematics was 113 points above the average score, putting the performance of Shanghai pupils about 3 school years ahead of pupils in average countries. Educational experts debated to what degree this result reflected the quality of the general educational system in China, pointing out that Shanghai has greater wealth and better-paid teachers than the rest of China. Hong Kong placed second in reading and science and third in maths.

Andreas Schleicher, PISA division head and co-ordinator, stated that PISA tests administered in rural China have produced some results approaching the OECD average. Citing further as-yet-unpublished OECD research, he said, "We have actually done Pisa in 12 of the provinces in China. Even in some of the very poor areas you get performance close to the OECD average." Schleicher believes that China has also expanded school access and has moved away from learning by rote, performing well in both rote-based and broader assessments.

In 2018 the Chinese provinces that participated were Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In 2015, the participating provinces were Jiangsu, Guangdong, Beijing, and Shanghai. The 2015 Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong cohort scored a median 518 in science in 2015, while the 2012 Shanghai cohort scored a median 580.

Critics of PISA counter that in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, most children of migrant workers can only attend city schools up to the ninth grade, and must return to their parents' hometowns for high school due to hukou restrictions, thus skewing the composition of the city's high school students in favor of wealthier local families. A population chart of Shanghai reproduced in The New York Times shows a steep drop off in the number of 15-year-olds residing there. According to Schleicher, 27% of Shanghai's 15-year-olds are excluded from its school system (and hence from testing). As a result, the percentage of Shanghai's 15-year-olds tested by PISA was 73%, lower than the 89% tested in the US. Following the 2015 testing, OECD published in depth studies on the education systems of a selected few countries including China.

In 2014, Liz Truss, the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, led a fact-finding visit to schools and teacher-training centres in Shanghai. Britain increased exchanges with Chinese teachers and schools to find out how to improve quality. In 2014, 60 teachers from Shanghai were invited to the UK to help share their teaching methods, support pupils who are struggling, and help to train other teachers. In 2016, Britain invited 120 Chinese teachers, planning to adopt Chinese styles of teaching in 8,000 aided schools. By 2019, approximately 5,000 of Britain's 16,000 primary schools had adopted the Shanghai's teaching methods. The performance of British schools in PISA improved after adopting China's teaching styles.

Finland
Finland, which received several top positions in the first tests, fell in all three subjects in 2012, but remained the best performing country overall in Europe, achieving their best result in science with 545 points (5th) and worst in mathematics with 519 (12th) in which the country was outperformed by four other European countries. The drop in mathematics was 25 points since 2003, the last time mathematics was the focus of the tests. For the first time Finnish girls outperformed boys in mathematics narrowly. It was also the first time pupils in Finnish-speaking schools did not perform better than pupils in Swedish-speaking schools. Former minister of Education and Science Krista Kiuru expressed concern for the overall drop, as well as the fact that the number of low-performers had increased from 7% to 12%.

India
India participated in the 2009 round of testing but pulled out of the 2012 PISA testing, with the Indian government attributing its action to the unfairness of PISA testing to Indian students. India had ranked 72nd out of 73 countries tested in 2009. The Indian Express reported, "The ministry (of education) has concluded that there was a socio-cultural disconnect between the questions and Indian students. The ministry will write to the OECD and drive home the need to factor in India's "socio-cultural milieu". India's participation in the next PISA cycle will hinge on this". The Indian Express also noted that "Considering that over 70 nations participate in PISA, it is uncertain whether an exception would be made for India".

India did not participate in the 2012, 2015 and 2018 PISA rounds.

A Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) committee as well as a group of secretaries on education constituted by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi recommended that India should participate in PISA. Accordingly, in February 2017, the Ministry of Human Resource Development under Prakash Javadekar decided to end the boycott and participate in PISA from 2020. To address the socio-cultural disconnect between the test questions and students, it was reported that the OECD will update some questions. For example, the word avocado in a question may be replaced with a more popular Indian fruit such as mango.

Malaysia
In 2015, the results from Malaysia were found by the OECD to have not met the maximum response rate. Opposition politician Ong Kian Ming said the education ministry tried to oversample high-performing students in rich schools.

Sweden
Sweden's result dropped in all three subjects in the 2012 test, which was a continuation of a trend from 2006 and 2009. It saw the sharpest fall in mathematics performance with a drop in score from 509 in 2003 to 478 in 2012. The score in reading showed a drop from 516 in 2000 to 483 in 2012. The country performed below the OECD average in all three subjects. The leader of the opposition, Social Democrat Stefan Löfven, described the situation as a national crisis. Along with the party's spokesperson on education, Ibrahim Baylan, he pointed to the downward trend in reading as most severe.

In 2020, Swedish newspaper Expressen revealed that Sweden had inflated their score in PISA 2018 by not conforming to OECD standards. According to professor Magnus Henrekson a large number of foreign-born students had not been tested. According to an article of Sveriges Radio, poor immigrant children's scores are a significant cause of the recent decrease in Swedish Pisa scores.

United Kingdom
In the 2012 test, as in 2009, the result was slightly above average for the United Kingdom, with the science ranking being highest (20). England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also participated as separated entities, showing the worst result for Wales which in mathematics was 43rd of the 65 countries and economies. Minister of Education in Wales Huw Lewis expressed disappointment in the results, said that there were no "quick fixes", but hoped that several educational reforms that have been implemented in the last few years would give better results in the next round of tests. The United Kingdom had a greater gap between high- and low-scoring students than the average. There was little difference between public and private schools when adjusted for socio-economic background of students. The gender difference in favour of girls was less than in most other countries, as was the difference between natives and immigrants.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned against putting too much emphasis on the UK's international ranking, arguing that an overfocus on scholarly performances in East Asia might have contributed to the area's low birthrate, which he argued could harm the economic performance in the future more than a good PISA score would outweigh.

In 2013, the Times Educational Supplement (TES) published an article, "Is PISA Fundamentally Flawed?" by William Stewart, detailing serious critiques of PISA's conceptual foundations and methods advanced by statisticians at major universities.

In the article, Professor Harvey Goldstein of the University of Bristol was quoted as saying that when the OECD tries to rule out questions suspected of bias, it can have the effect of "smoothing out" key differences between countries. "That is leaving out many of the important things," he warned. "They simply don't get commented on. What you are looking at is something that happens to be common. But (is it) worth looking at? PISA results are taken at face value as providing some sort of common standard across countries. But as soon as you begin to unpick it, I think that all falls apart."

Queen's University Belfast mathematician Dr. Hugh Morrison stated that he found the statistical model underlying PISA to contain a fundamental, insoluble mathematical error that renders Pisa rankings "valueless". Goldstein remarked that Dr. Morrison's objection highlights "an important technical issue" if not a "profound conceptual error". However, Goldstein cautioned that PISA has been "used inappropriately", contending that some of the blame for this "lies with PISA itself. I think it tends to say too much for what it can do and it tends not to publicise the negative or the weaker aspects." Professors Morrison and Goldstein expressed dismay at the OECD's response to criticism. Morrison said that when he first published his criticisms of PISA in 2004 and also personally queried several of the OECD's "senior people" about them, his points were met with "absolute silence" and have yet to be addressed. "I was amazed at how unforthcoming they were," he told TES. "That makes me suspicious." "Pisa steadfastly ignored many of these issues," he says. "I am still concerned."

Professor Svend Kreiner, of the University of Copenhagen, agreed: "One of the problems that everybody has with PISA is that they don't want to discuss things with people criticising or asking questions concerning the results. They didn't want to talk to me at all. I am sure it is because they can't defend themselves.

United States
Since 2012 a few states have participated in the PISA tests as separate entities. Only the 2012 and 2015 results are available on a state basis. Puerto Rico participated in 2015 as a separate US entity as well.

Research on possible causes of PISA disparities in different countries
Although PISA and TIMSS officials and researchers themselves generally refrain from hypothesizing about the large and stable differences in student achievement between countries, since 2000, literature on the differences in PISA and TIMSS results and their possible causes has emerged. Data from PISA have furnished several researchers, notably Eric Hanushek, Ludger Wößmann, Heiner Rindermann, and Stephen J. Ceci, with material for books and articles about the relationship between student achievement and economic development, democratization, and health; as well as the roles of such single educational factors as high-stakes exams, the presence or absence of private schools and the effects and timing of ability tracking.

Comments on accuracy
David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge wrote: "Pisa does present the uncertainty in the scores and ranks - for example the United Kingdom rank in the 65 countries is said to be between 23 and 31. It's unwise for countries to base education policy on their Pisa results, as Germany, Norway and Denmark did after doing badly in 2001."

According to a Forbes opinion article, some countries such as China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Argentina select PISA samples from only the best-educated areas or from their top-performing students, slanting the results.

According to an open letter to Andreas Schleicher, director of PISA, various academics and educators argued that "OECD and Pisa tests are damaging education worldwide".

According to O Estado de São Paulo, Brazil shows a great disparity when classifying the results between public and private schools, where public schools would rank worse than Peru, while private schools would rank better than Finland.


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ApologetiX

ApologetiX is an American Christian parody band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The band was founded in 1990, and since then, has played in almost all 50 states, released 40 studio albums, and built up a fan club that includes over 65,000 people. The band is currently composed of J. Jackson on vocals, Keith Haynie on bass guitar, Jimmy "Vegas" Tanner on drums, Bill Hubauer and Chris VonBartheld on keyboard, and Tom Milnes and Tom Tincha (a.k.a. "TNT"), both on lead guitar.

The name ApologetiX is a play on apologetics, the defense of a religious doctrine, in particular, Christian apologetics. The word is used in 1 Peter 3:15: "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer [defense or "apologia"] to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (NIV). Their logo, a triquetra, is an ancient symbol that has been appropriated by Christians to represent the Holy Trinity.

History
ApologetiX has had six official drummers. Jeff Pakula (June 1990 – September 1993), Rick Servocky (November 1993 – April 1995), Bob Flaherty (May 1995 – September 1998), Fred Behanna (February 1999 – January 2001), Bill "Moose" Rieger (March 2001 – January 2005) and Jimmy "Vegas" Tanner (October 2005 – present).

ApologetiX has had multiple other drummers as well, including: their longtime fill-in drummer, Keith Harrold (who played on Isn't Wasn't Ain't and Keep the Change); David McKee (who played on Jesus Christ Morningstar as well as two concerts in 1998); and Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz (the drummer for "Weird Al" Yankovic), who played on seven tracks on Biblical Graffiti. Ron Zanski (two shows in 1993) and Allen Muckle (three shows in 2001) have also played with the band.

According to the band's website, Yankovic himself has told them that he thinks they do "...fabulous work".

Since 2014, the band has been following a quarterly release schedule, producing a new studio album about every three months by releasing double singles bi-weekly. From 2014 to 2017, they were able to produce four albums per year. In 2018, their studio computers started to have speed issues, which slowed down the production of their albums. So far they have released two albums, with a third album on its way.

Musical style and lyrical themes
ApologetiX rewrites secular songs with Christian lyrics to create parodies with Christian messages, and, in the song "We're In A Parody Band," ApologetiX refers to itself as a cross between "Weird Al" Yankovic and Billy Graham.

The band's lyrical content is derived solely from Biblical passages and practices, frequently in a tongue-in-cheek manner. It is also noteworthy that lyrics are often embedded with Scripture references for further exploration of the song's content.

Some of their parodies include:

Band members

 * Current
 * J. Jackson - Vocals, lyricist (1990–present)
 * Keith Haynie - Bass guitar (1995–present)
 * Jimmy Tanner - Drums (2005–present)
 * Tom Milnes - Lead guitarist (2008–present)
 * Tom Tincha - Lead guitarist (2008–present)
 * Rich Mannion - Keyboardist, BGV, Drum Programming (2018–present)
 * Former
 * Chris VonBartheld - Keyboardist, Pianist, bgv's (2013–2018)
 * Bill Hubauer - Keyboardist, producer (1998–2018)
 * Karl Messner - Lead guitarist (1990–2007)
 * Andy Sparks - Rhythm guitarist, Bass (1991–1995)
 * Jerry Hayostek - Bass guitar (1992–1993)
 * B.J. Collins - Keyboardist, producer (1997–1998)
 * Todd Waites - Keyboardist (2011–2013)
 * Jeff Pakula - Drums (1990–1993)
 * Luke "Abaddon" Wienecke - Drums (1994–1996)
 * Rick Servocky - Drums (1993–1995)
 * Bob Flaherty - Drums (1995–1998)
 * Fred Behanna - Drums (1999–2001)
 * David McKee - Drums (2001)
 * Bill Rieger - Drums (2001–2005)

 * Session
 * Steve Kayner - Bass (1993)
 * Keith Harrold - Drums (1993–2000)
 * Jon Schwartz (drummer)|Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz - Drums (1999)
 * Everlife - Vocals (2003)
 * Janna Jackson - Vocals (2013-)
 * Elaine Heitzer - Vocals (2014)
 * Keely Singer - Vocals (2014)
 * John Marcinizyn - Slide guitar (2016)

Awards

 * 2005 Best CD Award: New & Used Hits: The Best of ApologetiX Vol. 1 & 2 (Christianity Today's Reader's Choice Awards)
 * 2004 Favorite Indie Artist (CCM Magazine Reader's Choice Awards)
 * 2002 Recorded Fringe Song of the Year: "The Real Sin Savior" (American Christian Music Awards/ChristianBEATS)
 * 2004 American Christian Music Awards, Alternative Song of The Year: "Lifestyles of The Rich & Nameless"
 * 2004 American Christian Music Awards, Outstanding Modern/College Rock Artist

Albums
National Christian Retail Bestsellers Rock Chart, published by CCM (#15, November 2001) National Christian Modern/College Rock Album Chart, ChristianBEATS (#1, May/June 2004) National Christian Newest Rock Album Chart, American Christian Music Journal (#1, December 2004) National Christian Modern/Alternative Album Chart, American Christian Music Journal (#1, December 2004)
 * Keep The Change
 * Adam Up
 * New & Used Hits: The Best of ApologetiX Vol. 1 & 2

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: ApologetiX


text: Category:Apartment buildings in Hong Kong


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Talk:Raw image format

Software support
- About The GIMP, the article says: "The latest version of GIMP, a free open source photo editing package, imports many raw formats. Older version have a plug-in which allows it to read and convert raw files." What version does this refer to? Please ammend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.230.190.131 (talk) 17:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

-I concur. My GIMP will not open Canon CR2 files (well, the Windows version won't). I realize most people install UFRaw, which works fine but RAW support is not native from what I can find. If this statement cannot be verified by anyone, it should be removed. 71.150.248.221 (talk) 05:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

RPP (raw photo processor) is missing (for mac os x) --84.119.26.251 (talk) 08:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

PRONUNCIATION
PRONUNCIATION NEEDED, ARTICLE INCOMPLETE (CATALONIA IS NOT SPAIN) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.3.100.165 (talk) 11:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Merged
I merged the "CCD-RAW" and "RAW image file" articles to create this one, and added some new text that corrects some errors in the previous versions (particularly in RAW image file). It can still use a lot of work; I don't know when I'll get a chance, so if someone else wants to contribute please do.

The color depth bullet is probably still confusing. Raw files have 12 bits per pixel, but only one channel (each pixel is either red, green, or blue depending on what color in the Bayer filter covered it. JPEG files have 8 bits per pixel for each channel (red, green, blue), so a total of 24 bits per pixel. But it's difficult to compare color depth between a 1 channel and a 3 channel image. I don't know if this needs to be explained here, in the color depth article, or not. If someone can explain this better, I'd appreciate it. If this is really confusing, let me know and I'll work on it.

A couple of new topics that might be useful:

 * When NOT to use raw; a lot of people are very vocal about it being a waste of time: "shoot correctly and you don't need it"
 * A list of common conversion programs (e.g., Capture-One, BreezeBrowser, Bibble, Photoshop CS and Elements 3)
 * A list of file extensions for common raw formats (e.g., Canon uses CRW, Nikon uses NEF) (the German version has an incomplete list for starters)
 * Some raw formats include an embedded JPEG, I think for quick extraction to evaluate overall quality before making the effort for a quality raw conversion; I don't know whether this is universal or why it is really used so didn't include it
 * More than just a pointer to Adobe DNG, although this could wait a few years to see how well it is received

--Rick Sidwell 20:45, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * "Raw files have 12 bits per pixel, but only one channel (each pixel is either red, green, or blue depending on what color in the Bayer filter covered it. JPEG files have 8 bits per pixel for each channel (red, green, blue), so a total of 24 bits per pixel."
 * That is interesting I would like to see that in the article, about how each pixel is a certain color due to the physical sensor having R, G, and B sensors.

 * I will try to add mosaicing to the article. However the quality of JPEG vrs Raw is simply untrue. JPEG is not RGB. Each RAW pixel contains 12 bits of brightness information. Whereas JPEG includes only 8 bits of brightness information. Color and saturation are (depending on the parameters) stored at considerably lower resolution. Therefore a RAW image will always have sharper brightness details than a jpeg even if they were both from a better external source. This is a crude simplification of JPEG btw. In reality it is more of a mosaic itself with colors and brightness gradients defined at intervals. -- Dark fred Talk to me 21:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Marketing aspects
While RAW support is a standard feature on dSLRs, it was also included in a lot of compact cameras several years ago, but few people used that because memory cards were expensive. Now memory cards are cheap,but it seams marketing has found RAW to be a "pro" feature and they use it to differentiate product categories. Example: The Nikon Coolpix P5100 and P5000 cameras are quite high quality products but they don't have RAW support while their predessor the Nikon Coolpix 5000 included it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.133.144.123 (talk) 16:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. The P6000 has a raw format. 83.77.61.32 (talk) 15:44, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Conversion
Can raw files be losslessly converted to PNG? TIFF? dbenbenn | talk 15:09, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't think the conversion would be reversable, and a certain amount of information would be lost.

 * You can to a perfect bit-for-bit lossless conversion to Adobe DNG, which is an unusual type of TIFF. With PNG and normal TIFF, you only lose from round-off error and from the loss of little odds and ends like knowing the alignment of the pixels to the camera sensor. It's not like going to a GIF or a low-quality JPEG. --anonymous

 * But the conversion is still not reversable from .DNG, simply because the digital development settings (contrast, color, curves) are not replicated 1:1 between adobe raw and the various manufacturers conversion utilities. There might be other information changes, I don't know if .dng supports the full range of bit depths that various manufacturers have. .DNG attempts to be a simple unified format whereas the manufacturers each have specific quirks in what data is saved and how it is stored. -- Dark fred Talk to me 15:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Oh no. Optionally, Adobe DNG can cheat. It can store all the unrecognized and unconvertable parts of the original file as a great big arbitrary blob. When you convert back, the original can be reconstructed bit-for-bit. AlbertCahalan 04:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

(However, overexposed areas are just as white with 12 bits as with 8, so using raw is not a substitute for correct exposure.)
This is not entirely true. Most blown out areas are only blown out in one or two channels. Adobe's latest version of camera raw software can recover a brightness value from these channels, that is quite realistic, and mix this with the color values from nearby pixels to produce nearly perfect recovery of some highlights. (i have used it to recover entire faces correctly). -- Dark fred Talk to me 11:50, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Accuracy
I have tried to make the article more accurate by explaining the mosaicing process and changing the comparison with JPEG to relate to how JPEG is actually stored. (previous editor was confusing JPEG with uncompressed RGB, and confusing mosaiced 12bit RAW with 36bit RGB). My grammer is not the best, feel free to make it more readable. -- Dark fred Talk to me 22:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

List of cameras supporting a RAW format
This section must be in it's own article, if it should exist at all. When complete, it will be too long for the RAW article. For example, all cameras listed on thedcraw-page should be included in this list. Berland 13:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

 * How about convert to list of raw formats, with corresponding companies, instead (like the box at top but with more info maybe)? Dicklyon 15:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That is much more interesting than a long list of camera models Berland 16:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I started the list of camera models with raw, and a similar section in TIFF. Uninteresting I agree, but I was looking for a camera with raw mode and couldn't find a comparison table anywhere, and ended up making a list myself. It's the sort of useful information that a continuously updated encyclopaedia excels at. So I think that this list belongs somewhere on Wikipedia, though not necessarily in the article on raw formats. Pol098 02:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

 * That's what this is for. Dicklyon 06:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for that, I'd never have created the list if I'd known that site. Though I still think the list is worth having, perhaps on its own page. Pol098 23:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Are there any objections to moving it to its own page? Berland 10:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Noone seemed to oppose this, so I did the move, see List of cameras supporting a raw format. Berland 16:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Would there be place somewhere on Wikipedia that lists which cameras are supported by a given software? I am asking because I created one for Apple and Adobe, including the date when they received support and software version which delivered the support. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noirdesir (talk • contribs) 19:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Questionable
However, RAW permits much greater control than JPEG for several reasons:

Finer control is easier for the settings when a mouse and keyboard are available to set them. For example, the white point can be set to any value, not just discrete values like "daylight" or "incandescent".\

The settings can be previewed and tweaked to obtain the best quality image or desired effect. (With in-camera processing, the values must be set before the exposure). This is especially pertinent to the white balance setting since color casts can be difficult to correct after the conversion to RGB is done.

 * Both can be done on JPEG images using appropriate software. Similarly they can only be done using appropriate RAW software. I understand there are apparent quality differences between doing this on a 'altered' image and a 'unprocessed' image, but the article currently seems to suggest it isn't possible in JPEG. ny156uk 20:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Your point is correct. The important point in this context is only the final quality, which is limited by either 8-bit for JPEG or 12/14/16 bit for RAW format. --Berland 20:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What's not possible with a JPEG is any recovering of information in pixels that have already been clipped to the colorspace gamut. It's not because it's JPEG (same deal with TIFF), but because it has been rendered to a colorspace.  With raw, there is no such clipping gamut, just sensor saturation limits.  But you're right, the article does need work. Dicklyon 23:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Capitalisation consistency
The article uses "raw", "Raw", and "RAW" inconsistently. Someone who knows more about what is acceptable should advise on which one to use throughout the article, and use just that one. 221.29.158.74 00:08, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

(Erk just not logged in)

 * Per comment below, lower-case is more logical. Anyone object if I change it?  Dicklyon 23:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't call it RAW because—in the words of the article—I believe it is a single file type, but simply because it is a file type. The lower-case spelling is also logical. --Adoniscik (talk) 00:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Use of capital letters makes sense. RAW is an acronym for Read And Write.  Sorry, no citation.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charles McRobert (talk • contribs) 01:47, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

 * No, it's not. Sorry, no citation.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:23, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Raw is not a format
Raw is just a collective term for the different camera manufacturers properitary file formats for saving unprocessed images directly from the CCD. Therefore it should be written raw and not RAW --EivindF 14:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree, logically. But about half the books that talk about RAW use all caps, as if it was a file type.  I think that's because conceptually it is a type of file, even though maybe different actual types and formats. Dicklyon 15:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

 * It is a question of grammar, nothing more. Raw is not an acronym, and whether it is a format or not plays no role in how it should be written. It is a noun and an adjective, and should be written as such. A significant number of magazines and online articles use the capitalized spelling, "RAW", yet prevalence does not imply correctness. This is just reluctance on behalf of these authors to think about what they're writing and apply correct grammar to it. DrSlony (talk) 02:38, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Images
I suspect that these images could be used in this article, but I don't know enough about them to be sure, perhaps editors might find them useful?: Cheers--DO11.10 22:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Image:Minolta Dynax 7D RAW Camera White Balance.jpg
 * Image:Minolta Dynax 7D RAW 6000K.jpg
 * Image:Minolta Dynax 7D RAW 3500K.jpg
 * Someone already added a set like that in the color balance article, which seems more sensible, since they have more to do with white point and color balance than with raw format. Although, if he doesn't fix the license, those will disappear.  Yours are a bit unclear, as the Exif says Auto White Balance on all of them.  How were these images made? Dicklyon 23:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I plead ignorance. I am just the image fairy.--DO11.10 00:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

RAW image format → Raw image format — More typical and logical case; stop propagating misconception that it's an acronym —Dicklyon 19:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

 * Support (I'm the nominator). Even though half of books and other sources use it as "RAW", there is no logical basis for that all-caps.  We seem to have a consensus, and a consistent usage in the article, to go  with the the typical and more logical generic word "raw", so we ought to move the article to reflect that. Dicklyon 19:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose (somewhat weak oppose) - Most papers I've seen use the all caps, too, and I agree at least half the books use this. Perhaps the reason is because they want to more clearly indicate it is in fact a file... and while it might not be a standardised format, it is indeed a type of file that has many commonalities between the different incarnations of it (size, what data is there, etc.) Even though it might be better if the world didn't use it all in caps, since it kind of does I would tend to oppose the move here.  I believe it is more likely someone would search for RAW than raw, and there is no reason why this is inherently ungrammatical or incorrect.  (Feel free to present evidence, especially about common usage, to the contrary.) --Cheers, Komdori 17:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The evidence is very mixed, which is why I figure we get to choose. GBS shows about 2/3 of books use all caps in "RAW file format", but that drops to less than half in phrases like "raw conversion".  Uwe Steinmueller, who wrote one such, mixes both forms on his web pages.  Adobe uses "Camera Raw" without all caps; same with Extensis in their "Pro Photo Raw Image Filter"; but Microsoft and OpenRAW went the other way.  We should certainly acknoledge both in the lead, but should pick one to use consistently in the article, and make the title match it.  I chose one, not realizing I wasn't going to be able to do the move, due to some history.  If you'd rather go with all caps, will you do the work to change it all back that way?  Dicklyon 04:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Oppose: See, , & . These are all major voices in technology & they use "RAW". (Wikimachine 02:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC))
 * So true. Yet other respected major players like Adobe and NIST and authors Bruce Fraser, Stephen Johnson, and Nick Sullivan don't all-cap it.  So why side with Microsoft? Dicklyon 03:15, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Support - It isn't an acronym, but rather the English word raw. I see no reason why it should be capitalized. However, I think it would be useful to add a sentence or two to the (newly moved) article stating that although it is not an acronym, in common usage people often type it as "RAW". Josh Thompson 08:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Support - same reason as Josh Thompson above. --Berland 14:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Any additional comments:

Does anyone understand why the article and the talk page have different names and cross-redirects? Did someone do an improper move at some point? Dicklyon 03:17, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes, here's the diff. Some anon IP changed all the "raw" to "RAW", and then in the next diff changed the article to a redirect to an article of the current name. Too bad it wasn't noticed and repaired much earlier. Now we have a mess. Dicklyon 03:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and before that, it has been moved from RAW to raw, properly. Like I'm proposing now. Dicklyon 03:25, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. But, since the split history had to be merged anyway, I have ended up moving the article to be at raw image format, if only because that did away with the need for moving this talk page. --Stemonitis 09:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks; with only one weak oppose and one Microsoft supporter in opposition, the consensus seemed close enough. Thanks for fixing the previous improper move. Dicklyon 14:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Apple Aperture raw processing limited to selected cameras.
"Finally, in October, Apple released Aperture, a photo post-production software package for professionals whose chief feature is full support for raw files." Actually it only supports a few cameras' raw images as of 7/22/2007. See the post on the apple site below. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=828344&tstart=105 I was quite suprised to find my Panasonic DMC - FZ8 raw files imported with a blank "Unsupported Image Format" message.

LoghouseJD 19:04, 22 July 2007 (UTC)loghouseJD

Proposed merge from digital negative
Since the guy who tagged it didn't start the discussion, I will.

Support – the two articles seem to be on the same topic. Adobe's "Digital Negative Format" is a specific raw format, but that's not what the digital negative is about. Dicklyon 02:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm the guy who tagged it. It seemed to me that it's really the same concept: "digital negative" is slightly more abstract, and this page is more concrete, but that's it: all discussion about why it's good to have a digital negative for an image, what you can do with it, who supports etc, that's one article. Stevage 07:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Support - there is not enough common knowledge on the abstract "digital negative" to warrant its own article yet. --Berland 20:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I did a merge. Feel free to work it over. Dicklyon 06:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Inaccurate/Misleading Information
Camera raw files have 12 or 14 bits of intensity information, not the gamma-compressed 8 bits typically stored in processed TIFF and JPEG files; since the data are not yet rendered and clipped to a color space gamut, more precision may be available in highlights, shadows, and saturated colors.

It should read:

Camera raw files have 12 or 14 bits of intensity information, not the gamma-compressed 8 bits typically stored in processed JPEG files; since the data are not yet rendered and clipped to a color space gamut, more precision may be available in highlights, shadows, and saturated colors.

TIFF files can contain 16 bits of information per channel, so it is not a good example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xenoptrix (talk • contribs) 06:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

 * It's not really inaccurate, since the 8-bit processed images are indeed typically stored in TIFF files, and since TIFF files typically store 8-bit images. Yes they can also store 16-bit images, but that doesn't make it untrue or misleading. Dicklyon 06:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Well a TIFF file can have 8 bit content, to say raw's benefit over tiff is that tiff can store only 8 bits per channel is misleading, as tiffs can store either 8 bit per channel OR 16 bit channel information. Thus, I would say remove TIFF from the discussion, because this section is really talking about RAW versus JPEG, JPEG can ONLY be 8 bits per channel.--Xenoptrix 06:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, that would be misleading if one said that. However, it doesn't say that's a benefit over tiff, it says it's a benefit over 8-bit images.  The rest of the statement "since the data are not yet rendered and clipped to a color space gamut, more precision may be available in highlights, shadows, and saturated colors" should probably be clarified as being an advantage over tiff, however.  Work on that; taking TIFF out is going the wrong direction. Dicklyon 06:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"it says it's a benefit over 8-bit images" however, TIFF is implicated as being an 8 bit per channel format. I think this comparison is rather lax, it needs a more rigorous comparison. Because 8/16 per channel of the TIFF or 8 per channel JPEG image is NOT the same 12/14 bit per channel of the raw image. Instead the TIFF/JPEG channels are reinterpretations of mosaic pattern. Upshot: the term bit-depth has been applied in two different contexts, but for each context, bit-depth means something different.--Xenoptrix 07:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

How do I send a message to you, Dicklyon? I am new to wiki editing, it seems like you only see my comments here after I've edited the wiki entry. --Xenoptrix 06:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

 * All the pages I edit are on my watch list, so if you address me on a talk page I'll see it; or use my page User talk:dicklyon. Or use the email link on my user page to send me an email. Dicklyon 06:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The caption on the side-by-side photos of the bananas is incorrect. Neither image is "the RAW file." In fact, a RAW image cannot be displayed on a computer screen. The image on the left, presumably is an RGB image that was output by some RAW converter program with all of its knobs set to default values, and the image on the right presumably is generated from the same original RAW file by the same software after the photographer/artist tweaked the knobs to achieve a desired look. 151.201.129.79 (talk) 22:49, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Innov8or's large edit
recently checked in a very large edit. I'm highly suspicious of such large edits, but Google doesn't turn up any sources for copyright violation. Going through the material he changed, I notice he changed the release year of Apple iPhoto 5 from 2005 to 2006. A Google search turned up the Apple press release announcing iLife '05 (which included iPhoto 5). It was indeed released in 2005 - a year before LightZone, which Innov8or has been advertising in this and several other articles. Given his history (and obvious motivations) and the tone of the new material, I'm inclined to just revert it. However I'm wondering if any of it is actually useful and could be rescued with a lot of editing. --Imroy (talk) 10:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I agree... questionable although no obvious copyvio. Beyond that, his material was unsourced.  I think it was appropriate to rv.  Parts of it might be useful if sourced.  ǝɹʎℲxoɯ ( contrib ) 16:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I reverted it before I noticed the comments here. It's a big opinion essay mostly.  Probably has some good points, but without a source to back them up, they seem to be more about his agenda as you note.  Innov8or, feel free to contribute, but preferably in manageable chunks that make verifiable points with an encyclopedic style. Dicklyon (talk) 16:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

TIFF is NOT a RAW file... or is it?
The table "RAW image file" at the top of this article incorrectly lists TIFF (.tif) as a RAW file format for Kodak. Clearly, this standard exchange format is not a RAW file. However, the TIFF format is technically a general-purpose container format that could theoretically contain any arbitrary data (including RAW subpixel data) if a few engineers were sufficiently out of their freaking minds and applied for a private range of tag values for that purpose....

So the question is this: did Kodak really do something as bonkers as writing RAW subpixel data into a TIFF file, or did somebody just throw up a list of formats that Kodak cameras support and not check it carefully? If Kodak did do something so utterly bizarre, this should be clearly noted. If not, the mention of .tif should be removed.

Either way, the mere thought of embedding RAW subpixel sensor data in a TIFF container is going to give me nightmares tonight. If I wake up crying, I'm blaming all of you. :-D

P.S. You left out the Rollei .rdc format, the Sinar .sti format, and probably a bunch of others. See http://pa.photoshelter.com/help/tour/formats for a large list and search for "raw".

Dgatwood (talk) 07:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Actually, most vendors have chosen to use TIFF as the file format for their camera raw data. TIFF (tagged image file format) provides a very flexible container.  But these TIFF files should not be opened and displayed as if they contained a regular image. Dicklyon (talk) 23:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Raw images necessarily come from a camera or scanner?
Is it necessarily true that a raw image must come from a camera or scanner? It is my opinion that a raw file is a raw file regardless of its source.

I believe that years ago (I think before scanners and digital cameras were common), various sorts of image files regarded as "raw" existed; e.g. a screenshot taken directly from the framebuffer would be regarded as raw. There are old programs such as rawtoppm (part of the netpbm software), which considers RGB data to be raw. (Confusingly, netpbm's ppm format exists in "raw" and "plain" varieties, which are different.)

Anyway, my point is that the term "raw" for image files has a long history and hasn't always referred exclusively to digital camera or scanner images. 71.82.211.210 (talk) 22:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

 * There is a completely different use of the term raw applying to image data, meaning image bytes in a file without any or much header or structural info or metadata. That's a raw "format".  This article is more about raw image data.  They do get confused a lot, so maybe it's worth a clarifying explanation. Dicklyon (talk) 23:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite
The Software Support section needs a complete rewrite:

1: It makes the issue look MUCH more complicated and scary than it is. Pretty much use any major photo editing software, and you are fine. The use of raw does not require the use of proprietary (for that camera model/manker) software to the degree this section suggests.

2: It has a "proprietary bad, open standards good" tone to it.

3: There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to the order and layout of the various software applications. Maybe it can be broken up in sections, such as major commercial photo editing software; photo viewing apps; support within OS GUI; niche photo editing software (such as GIMP); etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.71.15 (talk) 20:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions for image file formats
Please see the discussion at Talk:Image file formats on naming conventions for articles on image file formats. Dcoetzee 00:47, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Emerald Explanation
Sorry Dicklyon. I think, and it seems, more appropriate my contribution on emerald explanation than the previous (cyan), because this two colours are different and clearly defined in the common use of the words. I suppose that in understanding of this differences between colours, is more useful to refer to specifics examples of colors of objects in normal condition of light (color temperature of the light near 5,000 K). No matter if in colorimetry (as a mathematical point of view), the two colours are very similar, our ordinary visual experience make us able to recognize and distinguish the two colors. (Zeus57) 16:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks for linking emerald. I've also added sources that clarify that it's a blue-green or cyan sort of color; that is, on the blue side of green.  If you can find further sourced info describing the color that Sony used, by all means do add it.  Dicklyon (talk) 16:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Raw image files - digital negatives metaphor in the intro
two paragraphs in the intro propose a metaphor relating raw files to film negs. but negs are open standards, are very broadly supported, and are suitable for long term archiving. raw files use a plethora of closed, often secret, proprietary file encodings, not widely interoperable, and concerns about potential bit-rot are widely discussed.

adobe's attempt to rationalize the raw mess with their open standard Digital Negative (file format) confuses the metaphor further.

add to this the fact that many (and ever more) younger people will have never used negatives and for them the metaphor wont help them.

to clarify the concept of a raw file, i think the intro would do better to contrast it with the other files that cameras and scanners typically produce, such as jpeg, pdf and what have you.

 * Agreed. There are too many weak analogies to film processing, and they don't fit.  Another is "developing".  Digital images can be processed in many steps.  It's also important to understand that JPEGs cannot be displayed directly either.  You need software to convert them into screen images or paper prints.  In that respect, the only difference between JPEG and raw formats is that JPEG converters are more widespread.  But that's because it's a standard, not because it's easier to display.  I suggest updating the page to explain this.  Groogle (talk) 22:05, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Digital development
I've removed the statement that digital development is formally known as demosaicing, since demosaicing is only part of the digital development process

Martin.Budden (talk) 09:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Standardization section
I edited this section to contain OpenEXR, the much overlooked and imho best open format to store Raw data in, that is currently available.

The digital effects industry has moved completely to this format for most digital intermediate work over the last few years. Image editing software like Apple' Shake, Foundry's Nuke, or Autodesk's Toxic support OpenEXR perfectly. The lack of support for OpenEXR in most (any) raw processing software used by digital photographers, on the hand, still eludes me but I presume that Adobe brings a lot of momentum in pushing a format (DNG) that they more or less control.
 * Possibly one reason is that the support of metadata does not seem to be standardised in OpenEXR.
 * Martin.Budden (talk) 09:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I've looked into this a bit further and http://www.openexr.com/ReadingAndWritingImageFiles.pdf states
 * "For the current list of standard attributes, see the header file ImfStandardAttributes.h" Looking at http://openexr.sourcearchive.com/documentation/1.6.1/ImfStandardAttributes_8h-source.html it seems that a fairly small set of metadata is supported.
 * Martin.Budden (talk) 16:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I also miss OpenRAW in this section. But having doubts about the need for either DNG or OpenRAW, given the existence and maturity of OpenEXR, I don't feel like fixing this. ;-)

Finally, the article mentions that DNG "has been received enthusiastically by open-source developers". Firstly, the reference cited only contains a statement from a single developer, so the plural is dubious.

 * I agree, this certainly does not seem an unbiased statement.
 * Martin.Budden (talk) 09:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, while many OSS programs support DNG now, it is unclear at best if this is so because they have to or because they choose to.

I'd vote for changing this sentence or removing the resp. part of the sentence entirely. It smells like it was written by some marketing guy on Adobe's payroll. MoritzMoeller (talk) 19:28, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I agree that the tone of this sentence is out of place here. However, Dave Coffin is a well-known independent who, in some ways, competes with Adobe, and who supplies software to Adobe's competitors. His statement was about a "free to use" file format that happens to belong to Adobe, (exactly the same is true of TIFF!), not about an Adobe commercial product. (For interest, I too have been falsely accused of being on Adobe's payroll because of my statements about DNG. But the fact is that, in the world of raw image formats, DNG has several specific and verifiable merits that distinguish it from other formats.) Barry Pearson 09:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I've changed "received enthusiastically" to "exploited" to make the tone more neutral. In fact, some developers have been enthusiastic, but that would be better stated (and verified) in the "Reception" section in the DNG page, rather than the "Standardization" section here. Perhaps this whole paragraph should be removed? Barry Pearson 07:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Any discussion of standarization must include the fact that there has been an ISO standard raw image format, TIFF/EP, since 2001. Especially since TIFF/EP has been under revision since 2006, and hence it is standardization currently in progress. (There is a timeline at the TIFF/EP page). It is well-established that Adobe have offered DNG to ISO for this purpose. A likely consequence of what is publicly known is that, sooner or later, version 2 of TIFF/EP will be published with "interoperability profile 2" being a raw image format based largely or entirely on DNG and using the extension ".DNG". The logic for this is impeccable - ISO are revising and extending an existing standard, and drawing upon a format that is already an extension of that standard and being used in the marketplace makes it a lot easier to publish a credible revision. ISO will not waste effort, and risk confusion, pursuing other options in parallel. TC42 WG18 is recognised to be the ISO group charged with such electronic photography standards, and they are busy with TIFF/EP and others. (I referenced I3A (International Imaging Industry Association) - they are the secretariat for the ISO Technical Committee 42 (ISO/TC42) (scroll down), responsible for standards for electronic photography). Barry Pearson 12:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I've tweaked the parts of "Drawbacks" that didn't recognise that there actually is a standard raw image format. Barry Pearson 07:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Other standards bodies may adopt other specifications, but standards bodies have a tendency to accept what other bodies have standardized, unless there is a good reason not to, so that they can concentrate on their own specialist fields. I am not aware of any other standards body that feels that the raw image format of digital still cameras is within its scope and that it needs to develop such a standard independently of ISO. Barry Pearson 12:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I question the inclusion in this section of OpenEXR, SMPTE DPX, and HD Photo / JPEG XR. In particular, while researching for the publication of my 6 web pages on HD Photo / JPEG XR over more than two and a half years, I have not seen an "official" suggestion that it is intended to become a raw image format with the ability to hold raw image data. (That is, to hold separate data from the individual sites of a sensor with a color filter array). Instead, it is intended to be (inter alia) a high-quality alternative to shooting raw, offering better quality and flexibility than normal JPEG. (JPEG XR has now been ratified as International Standard ISO/IEC 29199-2 and also ITU-T Recommendation T.832, and that version is certainly not capable of supporting such raw image data). The OpenEXR and SPX pages in Wikipedia give no hint that they are to be (or could be) enhanced to be raw image formats, and it is strange that this current page contains more speculation about them than their own pages. Barry Pearson 12:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I've now removed those other file formats from this section. The HD Photo sentence was inaccurate and out-of-date: it has now become a standard, and doesn't support raw images. There is no evidence that I can find anywhere that OpenEXR and DPX could be turned into raw image formats, nor that anyone intends to, nor that anyone intends to submit the results for standardization, nor that any standards body is interested in adopting them for this purpose. I believe any such activity should be verified on their own pages before being used here. Barry Pearson 07:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the term "patent encumbered" from the text about DNG because there is no evidence for it. In fact, in September 2009 Adobe stated (in a launch of material for CinemaDNG) "There are no known intellectual property encumbrances or license requirements for CinemaDNG or its underlying formats DNG, TIFF, XMP, or MXF". The "Digital Negative (DNG) Specification Patent License" that was being cited as evidence for patents on DNG is not such evidence (and is more than 4 years older than the recent Adobe statement). That License does not state that there are patents on DNG, and certainly doesn't identify any. In effect, it says "whether or not there are any patents is irrelevant because you have the right to exploit DNG anyway". In other words, it eliminates the possibility of any such "encumbrance" upon the exploiter, and provides reassurance. Barry Pearson 08:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I have been researching and debating DNG for nearly 5 years, and I have never found or been informed of a patent. I have searched the US Patent and Trademark Office site for any such patent, and I haven't found one. It is hard to prove a negative, but given that the License is not evidence for patents, and in view of Adobe's recent statement, I believe the onus is on anyone claiming that DNG is "patent encumbered" to identify at least one patent that encumbers DNG. Barry Pearson 08:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I have brought the text about support of DNG by camera makers up to date, but also removed identification of specific cameras. The page on DNG has such a list, and I have added a reference to my own page that I attempt to keep up to date and comprehensive. This list changes frequently (I have added a few cameras to it during September 2009) and attempting also to keep 2 separate pages in Wikipedia up to date appears to be a waste of effort (and likely to fail). Barry Pearson 08:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

TIFF misconceptions
I noticed quite a few debates about TIFF on this discussion page. The TIFF article in Wikipedia is unfortunately poorly written so I can't point to this one as a source of facts. But: TIFF is a container. Many TIFF flavors exist. Confusion about bit depth: In print & web, people often talk about 24 bit TIFF, meaning a 3*8BIT RGB TIFF. Similarly people mean "indexed" color when they talk about 8 bit images. This is per-image bit depth. In other fields, people talk about per channel bit depths. E.g. 8 or 16 bits. Often overseen/ignored by the digital photographers, but TIFF can store floating point data in 32bits per channel. Channels can be interpreted in different ways. TIFF tags serve to identify what they mean. Common formats for floating point (raw) data in visual effects, digital cinematography and scientific imaging for TIFF are: Of course, there's also plain RGB data with 32 bits per channel. Most of these are also identified correctly & read by Photoshop.
 * log Luv
 * Lab
 * XYZ

Finally, 32 bit/channel floating point RGB TIFF with or w/o lossless compression (e.g. LZW or Adobe Deflate, aka ZIP) is a valid raw data container. So a generic statement like "TIFF is a raw format" is true in consideration of this fact.

The float data is linear, no information is lost unless the sensor the data came from had more than 32 bits/channel precision (not the case for any cameras used by most mortals for another few years, 14-16 bit seems to be max). MoritzMoeller (talk)

 * So a generic statement like "TIFF is a raw format" is true in consideration of this fact. That does not follow.  It might make sense to say that TIFF can be used as a raw image format.  Indeed many raw file formats use TIFF as the container, including Adobe's DNG.  That doesn't make TIFF a raw format.  Dicklyon (talk) 08:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

the raw that isn't medium-rare
I came to this article looking for information about the format of .raw files, where there isn't any metadata at all, not even dimensions or color depth, just bits (or bytes if you don't look too close :) ) and to be open requires you to specify on the program the dimension, color depth and a few other parameters if the color depth is bigger than 1 bit, where can I find more information about it? --TiagoTiago (talk) 22:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In the documentation of the hardware that produced that raw sensor dump.DrSlony (talk) 03:22, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Bayer filter diagram
I think this page would benefit from a diagram of a typical bayer filter. It's a pretty significant difference from most image formats. None of the images currently on bayer filter are quite what I'm looking for. —Darxus (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Not all cameras have Bayer filters. Fujifilm X Series cameras, for example, use a different pattern of red, green, and blue photosites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor 151.201.129.79 (talk) 22:56, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Mis-use of the term "raw image file"
Raw image file is actually an uncompressed image without any header (the image inside may be coded with RGB/YUV or other color spaces). This article is actually talking about CCD/CMOS data. The term "raw image file" is actually a mis-use here.

Opening a raw image file requires user explicitly specifying the width and height of the raw image. This is because raw image file does not have header data. CCD/CMOS data files however, contains even more information (exposure settings, shutter, etc.) in the header file than some uncompressed file format like BMP. Therefore, they are well-formatted and not raw image files at all.

 * That type of "raw" image file is not what this article is about. Not clear what you mean by "mis-use". Dicklyon (talk) 03:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

 * Is there an article about that type of raw file?--TiagoTiago (talk) 00:09, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, but the concept is discussed briefly at Pixmap. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

 * I don't think raw files should be called image files at all as they're just raw data + metadata, or in some cases (think of industry or science) it may be raw data even without any metadata. I struggle to invent a better name though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.154.75.211 (talk) 07:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Depends on what you think the word, "image" means. A RAW file from a digital camera contains data that _mostly_ defines an image that can be displayed on a computer screen or printed on paper. One difference between a RAW file and some other image file formats is in the intended use. Other file formats are suitable for encoding "finished" images that are ready to be viewed or printed without any human intervention, whereas the RAW file is intended more to _permit_ and facilitate human intervention before the final image is output in some other format.
 * IMO, if you want craft a more narrow definition of what qualifies as an "image file," so that all of the different camera RAW files in the world are not "image files," and all of the other file formats in the world that can represent 2D pictures _are_ image files, then you may be at the threshold of a deep rabbit hole. 151.201.129.79 (talk) 23:08, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Sensor image data
In the section "Sensor image data", third paragraph, the second sentence has seven commas and a semi-colon, making it rather imcomprehensible.

Would someone who understands the subject please re-write it, preferably splitting it into three or four sentences ! Thanks ! Darkman101 (talk) 02:53, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

 * I made a pass at improving it. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

What RAW formats are uncompressed?
Article states: "JPEG images are typically saved using a lossy compression format (though a lossless JPEG compression is now available). Raw formats are typically either uncompressed or use lossless compression, so the maximum amount of image detail is always kept within the raw file."

 * I'm not aware of any actual uncompressed RAW formats, but I'm sure there must be one or two floating about. However, I doubt very much that they're typical in any sense.  I thought I'd be bold and change it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.153.132.198 (talk) 14:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

 * I wouldn't say 'typically' since this implies a statistic which I'm sure no-one here has carried out, but a raw image is just a dump of a sensor's data, and it's up to the designer whether he wants to compress that or not. DNGs can be uncompressed. DrSlony (talk) 03:25, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It really depends. DNG files are usually uncompressed, same with ARW. On the other hand cRAW saved as ARW uses lossless compression, while sRAW uses heavy lossy compression (by down-scaling of the image). SkywalkerPL (talk) 13:04, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Standardize RAW vs raw
This article heavily favors the use of "raw" over "RAW", which I feel is the correct way anyway. I would suggest that, aside from external references, all instanced of RAW are switched to raw, and going forward that's all that's used.

Farski (talk) 15:48, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

 * Yes, of courese. I have generally edited in that direction, but may not have kept up with all...  Dicklyon (talk) 16:44, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

this doesn't make much sense
"camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera(...) Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed" - so... they are processed or they aren't? Introduction contradicts itself. SkywalkerPL (talk) 13:01, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I think the problem is really that the lead section is so poorly written that it's like getting repeatedly bludgeoned by dispicable laziness until one is dumbfounded, —until what might normally make sense does not. I think if you were not forced into a defensive position by the terrible writing (such as inappropriate argot, jargon, and excessive lazy-linking,) you would have breezed by that inconsistency.  —My guess?  minimally processed = unprocessed. But that will do you no good, will it? If writing quality is judged according to effectiveness of communication, (always the primal, basic criterion) then this lead section loses. It's embarrassingly bad. Curiously, the next few sections, —where these weaknesses are normally better tolerated,— do a much better job! More specifically, see Manual of Style (lead section). Another hint: by definition it is utterly impossible for just one to communicate. Final clue; google: digital photography raw. --71.133.254.31 (talk) 00:51, 13 March 2014 (UTC)Doug Bashford

 * I think it just means "little or no processing". It's hard to define what "no processing" means in the context of any reasonably complex system, and it generally takes a little bit of preprocessing to store sensor data in something like DNG format.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:21, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Edit request
This silly article claims that negatives are "not directly usable as an image". Really? I guess all of the negatives available for sale, as art, and all of the movies using negatives as part of the movie exist in some other Universe? I'd suggest the editors of this piece actually think about what they are writing and not expand analogies into the ridiculous. ... Oh, I found another gross blunder: it seems that Android 5.0 - according to this article - allows the smartphone user to take RAW images...how does a camera "take" a file format? It should be obvious that any device "takes" sensor dependent data - the only question is how are those (voltage? (for CCDs)) measurements encoded (into a file) for storage? (with possibly several stages of processing (intermediate representations of the raw measurements) prior to storage in a datafile, of course.)216.96.79.240 (talk) 21:35, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

reversible steps
I'm not sure this is accurate some of the processes are not fully revisable as they involve rounding of the numbers which will prevent going back. You certainly cannot go from the final image back to the original data. The entire process induces a loss when converting to any of the more common formats.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 14:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Raw image format


text:
CSS David

CSS David was an American Civil War-era torpedo boat. On October 5, 1863, she undertook a partially successful attack on USS New Ironsides which was participating in the blockade of Charleston, South Carolina.

Construction
Based upon a design by St. Julien Ravenel, David was built as a private venture by T. Stoney at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863, and was put under the control of the Confederate States Navy (CSN). The cigar-shaped boat carried a 32 by explosive charge of 134 lb gunpowder on the end of a spar projecting forward from her bow. CSS David operated as a semi-submersible: water was taken into ballast tanks so that only the length of the open-top conning tower and the stack for the boiler appeared above water. Designed to operate very low in the water, David resembled in general a submersible submarine; she was, however, strictly a surface vessel. Operating on dark nights, and using anthracite coal (which burns without smoke), David was nearly as hard to see as a true submarine.

Attack on New Ironsides
On the night of October 5, 1863, David, commanded by Lieutenant William T. Glassell, CSN, left Charleston Harbor to attack the casemate ironclad steamer USS New Ironsides. The torpedo boat approached undetected until she was within 50 yd of the blockader. Hailed by the watch on board New Ironsides, Glassell replied with a blast from a shotgun and David plunged ahead to strike. Her spar torpedo detonated under the starboard quarter of the ironclad, throwing high a column of water which rained back upon the Confederate vessel and put out her boiler fires. Her engine dead, David hung under the quarter of New Ironsides while small arms fire from the Federal ship spattered the water around the torpedo boat.

Believing that their vessel was sinking, Glassell and two others abandoned her; the pilot, Walker Cannon, who could not swim, remained on board. A short time later, Assistant Engineer J. H. Tomb swam back to the craft and climbed on board. Rekindling the fires, Tomb succeeded in getting David's engine working again, and with Cannon at the wheel, the torpedo boat steamed up the channel to safety. Glassell and Seaman James Sullivan, David's fireman, were captured. New Ironsides, though not sunk, was damaged by the explosion. US Navy casualties were Acting Ensign C.W.Howard (died of gunshot wound), Seaman William L. Knox (legs broken) and Master at Arms Thomas Little (contusions).

The next four months of David's existence are obscure. She or other torpedo boats tried more attacks on Union blockaders; reports from different ships claim three such attempts, all unsuccessful, during the remainder of October 1863. On March 6, 1864, David attacked USS Memphis (1862) in the North Edisto River. The torpedo boat struck the blockader first on the port quarter, but the torpedo did not explode. Memphis slipped her chain, at the same time firing ineffectively at David with small arms. Putting about, the torpedo boat struck Memphis again, this time a glancing blow on the starboard quarter; once more the torpedo misfired. Since Memphis had now opened up with her heavy guns, David, having lost part of her stack when rammed, retreated up the river out of range. Memphis, undamaged, resumed her blockading station.

David's last confirmed action came on April 18, 1864 when she tried to sink the screw frigate USS Wabash (1855). Alert lookouts on board the blockader sighted David in time to permit the frigate to slip her chain, avoid the attack, and open fire on the torpedo boat. Neither side suffered any damage.

The ultimate fate of David is uncertain. Several torpedo boats of this type fell into Union hands when Charleston was captured in February 1865. David may well have been among them.

Wrecks discovered
On January 20, 1998, underwater archaeologist Dr. E. Lee Spence led a Sea Research Society expedition, funded by philanthropist Stanley M. Fulton, to find the remains of the two Confederate torpedo boats shown in various photos taken shortly after the fall of Charleston. Spence's theory was that the two vessels had been abandoned where they lay and were simply filled over as the city expanded. Spence used still existing houses in the pictures to triangulate where they might be. Using a ground penetrating radar, operated by Claude E. "Pete" Petrone of National Geographic Magazine, the expedition located two radar anomalies consistent with what would be expected of the two wrecks. The anomalies were under present-day Tradd Street, so no excavation was done. A post-war letter written by David C. Ebaugh, who supervised the construction of David, described her as abandoned at what was then the foot of Tradd Street.

Other "David"s
"David" came to be the generic term for any torpedo boat resembling this David. An unknown number of torpedo boats of the David-type were built for and operated by the CSN. When Federal forces captured Charleston in February 1865, they found, incomplete, a much larger David, with a length of about 160 ft and designed as a cargo-carrying blockade-runner. This vessel was taken to Washington DC.

title: CSS David


text:
Duchy of Livonia

The Duchy of Livonia, also referred to as Polish Livonia or Livonia, was a territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that existed from 1561 to 1621. It corresponds to the present-day areas of northern Latvia and southern Estonia.

History
Livonia had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1561, since the Livonian Order was secularized by the Union of Vilnius and the Livonian Confederation dissolved during the Livonian Wars. Part of Livonia formed the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia while the south-west part of today's Estonia and north-east part of today's Latvia, covering what are now Vidzeme and Latgale, were ceded to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In 1566, it was declared the Duchy of Livonia according to the Treaty of Union between the landowners of Livonia and authorities of Lithuania; Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz became the first Governor of the Duchy (1566–1578) in Sigulda Castle. It was a province of Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1569. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, it became a joint domain of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy.

The larger part of the Duchy was conquered by Swedish Empire during the Polish–Swedish wars, and their gains were recognized in the Truce of Altmark in 1629. The Commonwealth retained southeastern parts of the Wenden Voivodeship, renamed to Inflanty Voivodeship with the capital in Daugavpils (Dyneburg), until the first Partition of Poland in 1772, when it was annexed by Catherine the Great's Russian Empire. The title "Prince of Livonia" was added to the grand title of later Russian Emperors.

Administrative divisions

 * Dorpat Voivodeship (Dorpat) from 1598 to the 1620s
 * Parnawa Voivodeship (Parnawa) from 1598 to the 1620s
 * Wenden Voivodeship (Wenden) from 1598 to the 1620s

title: Duchy of Livonia


text:
User:MrJones/Review of candidates

All comments on this page are my opinion (unless they are contributed by another user) and are not to be automatically understood as factual. If you want to know if it's true, find out for yourself; it's not hard on the whole.

User:Improv (started)
This user seems to have been predominantly active on marking articles for deletion and cleanup since the 10th of September 2004. He has reverted many edits by Chuck F.

This account is not in the top 1000 wikipedians by number of edits, thus has made less than 1241 edits. This is because the account was renamed from Pgunn which made 1277 edits.

He started his present account on WP on 06:50, 28 Oct 2004. His previous username was Pgunn. He has been active in the latter guise since 2002, though he only made one edit that year. He made six the following year, then made many edits from April 2004 onwards. His previous account made 1277 edits. The list of edits by that account may be found here.

The edits by this account also seem predominantly focused on the votes for deletion page.

User:Raul654 (started)
Raul has made most of his contributions on non-article pages: 15129 vs 5994. Mr. Jones 11:14, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User:Sam Spade (one reference; not started)
History not yet reviewed. See User:Spleeman/Sam_Spade for high(?)lights.

User:SPUI (started)
This user did a few obviously odd things back in October, but since has made apparently constructive contributions to articles about the transportation systems in and around Florida, and the history of the construction of Disneyworld.

He frequently (and for no aparent reason) makes references to the (probably imaginary) Gay Niggers Association of America, which has its origins in attempts to prevent Slashdot from operating effectively. Perhaps he likes people to groundlessly think of him as a bogeyman so that he can feel superior about their superficiality. Who knows?

He has notably often failed to use the preview button and has made many edits to the same article just a few minutes apart. This might be construed as an attempt to increase the number of edits made, either to make it harder to review his edit history and pick out bad edits, or perhaps to improve his position in the ranking by number of edits.

He has had little or no involvement in conflict resolution.

User:Yoshiah ap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits

title: User:MrJones/Review of candidates


text:
Moura, Queensland

Moura is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Banana in Central Queensland, Australia. It services the surrounding coal mining and rural activities. It is situated approximately 65 km west of Biloela on the Dawson Highway, 186 km west of the port city of Gladstone, and 171 km south west of Rockhampton.

In the, the locality of Moura had a population of 1,993 people.

Economy
A number of industries are represented in the local economy. Chief amongst these is coal mining. The name of the local coal mine changes each time it is sold, currently Dawson coal mine, owned and operated by AngloAmerical Coal. Only open-cut mining has been used since 1994. Beef, cotton and cereals are other major industries of the area.

History
In 1854 Charles Marshall named his leased pastoral selection Moura. There are two theories regarding the origin of the name. One is that it is named after Moura in Portugal where he served in the British Army during the Peninsular Wars. The other is that it is an Aboriginal word meaning native camp dog.

The Moura property was developed into a homestead in 1880 by Edward Homer. The town was first established in 1936 as a farming centre near the existing Moura Station.

The Moura Post Office opened in late 1939.

Moura Provisional School was opened on 10 September 1940. It became Moura State School on 1 January 1948. In 1965 a secondary department was attached to the school. By 1975, there were sufficient secondary students to warrant a formal high school and so Moura State High School was opened on 25 January 1976 with 263 pupils.

Mining disasters
There have been three mining disasters that have occurred near Moura:

 * The first was the Kianga mining disaster occurring due to an explosion in the underground workings of the Kianga No. 1 mine on 20 September 1975, claiming 13 miners' lives.  On 11 March 1978, a memorial centre was officially opened in Moura to commemorate the disaster.
 * The second, on 16 July 1986, was an explosion in the Moura No. 4 underground mine, claiming twelve miners' lives, the youngest miner being 18.
 * The third was an explosion in the Moura No. 2 underground coal mine on 7 August 1994. Rescue and recovery attempts were abandoned after a second, more violent explosion occurred 18 hours later. Eleven miners' lives had been lost and the mine was sealed at the surface.

After 1994, underground mining ceased and the area was operated as an open-cut coal mine.

In November 2017, a routine blast in the mine resulted in ground movement leading to a "circular geotechnical failure" that resulted in a crack through a public access road across the open pit. The road had been a key access and freight route for farmers and graziers to reach the town of Moura, including a school bus route. The road remained closed in February 2018 and was expected to remain unstable indefinitely. The company had conducted improvements to a southern detour route, and consulted with the community about a viable long-term alternative. A new route was proposed which would cross the pit further north, but was expected to take 15 months to complete construction.

Climate
Average yearly Rainfall: 732mm, raining an average of 63 days per year. The average summer temperature is 32 degrees Celsius (with temperatures in excess of 36 degrees Celsius a common occurrence during Dec-Jan). The average winter temperature is 22 degrees Celsius.

Education
Moura State School is a government primary school (P-6), while Moura State High School is a government secondary school (7-12). Both are located in Gillespie Street.

150th meridian
The 150th meridian east, located just outside Moura, is popular among tourists as well as local residents to have their picture taken in the exact path of the longitude line. Rocks with drill holes have been lined up to represent the exact angle and location of longitude line.

APEX Park (river)
The APEX park is situated next to the Dawson River and is located 7 km west on the Dawson highway. The APEX park has free camping grounds with facilities such as hot showers, a traditional wood barbecue, toilets and lawn for the afternoon picnic. It also has a public boat ramp.

Museum
The Moura Museum and Information Centre is located at 33 Gillespie Street. The museum presents Moura's agricultural and industrial history. A set of Japanese collectables provided by the Mitsui Mining Company are on display.

Muddy Water Classic
Moura Muddy water classic is a fishing competition held annually on the 3rd weekend in February at the APEX park on the Dawson River. It brings many people from the surrounding areas for the local fishing competition.

Campdrafting
Moura hosts an annual campdraft in July.

Coal and Country Festival
The Coal and Country festival is held every year in the third week of August for seven days. The festival holds events like coal shovelling and a professional rodeo.

It is often held on the weekend of the third week with festivities beginning on the Friday afternoon and ending on the Sunday. It is held at the recreational grounds where cattle yards and large spaces are easily available

Facilities
The Banana Shire Council has an administrative office in Gillespie Street. It operates a library at MacArthur Street.

The town also has many shops, including banks, post office, video store, grocery store, newsagent, beauticians, hairdressers, butcher, service station, electrical, furniture and hardware store and many more. Moura also has numerous sporting clubs (golf, bowls, squash, football) as well as eateries and restaurants. There is also a RSL and Memorial (now closed) club for socialising.

Facilities
Moura Cemetery (also known as Moura Lawn Cemetery) is at 126 Theodore Moura Road (-24.5742°N, 149.9839°W). It is managed by the Banana Shire Council.

Town Twinning

 * 🇵🇹 Moura, Portugal

title: Moura, Queensland