Panasonic RW2 IR Color Channel Swap

[BangkokPhoto]

I had a Panasonic DMC-GF1 converted to IR. This conversion requires the red and blue color channels swapped in post with GIMP; the workflow is very time consuming. Is there a way to swap color channels in the RW2 files in exiftool.

In the beginning I would shoot JPG; and have never found a way to swap color channels for JPEGs; could ExifTool swap color channels in JPEG files?

[StarGeek]

No.  Exiftool only processes image metadata, not the image data itself.

But it looks like ImageMagick will do it.  See this thread.

[BangkokPhoto]

the RW2 files contain color-channel in the EXIF data.

[Phil Harvey]

I don't know of any RW2 metadata that ExifTool can write which would allow you to do this.

- Phil

[BangkokPhoto]

I was seeing:
0x0011   RedBalance   int16u   (found in Digilux 2 RAW images) **** (Also in the GF1)
0x0012   BlueBalance   int16u

and thinking I could swap them.

[Phil Harvey]

That wouldn't work, and would just change the brightness of red and blue without swapping them.

You would need to change the CFA pattern somehow, but I don't know how to do this for RAF images.

- Phil

[reisschuessel]

You would need to change the CFA pattern somehow, but I don't know how to do this for RAF images.

As i was experimenting with changing the CFA pattern of some RAW files of different manufacturers i was wondering about this too.
It turns out that if converting a Panasonic RAW to DNG you get the "CFA Pattern 2" which can then be used to swap the channels.
I checked with files from an LX-3 and GF5.

Maybe this is of interest for the thread opener or someone else?

-Niels