A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed, viewed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter in a wide-gamut internal color space where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a viewable file format such as JPEG or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. There are dozens of raw formats in use by different manufacturers of digital image capture equipment. Rationale Raw image files are sometimes incorrectly described as "digital negatives", but neither are they negatives nor do the unprocessed files constitute visible images. Rather, the Raw datasets are more like exposed but undeveloped film which can be converted (electronically developed) in a non-destructive manner multiple times in observable, reversible steps to reach a visually desired image. (With exposed film, development is a single event that physically transforms the unexposed film irreversibly.) Like undeveloped photographic film, a raw digital image may have a wider dynamic range or color gamut than the developed film or print. Unlike physical film after development, the Raw file preserves the information captured at the time of exposure. The purpose of raw image formats is to save, with minimum loss of information, data obtained from the sensor. Raw image formats are intended to capture the radiometric characteristics of the scene, that is, physical information about the light intensity and color of the scene, at the best of the camera sensor's performance. Most raw image file formats store information sensed according to the geometry of the sensor's individual photo-receptive elements (sometimes called pixels) rather than points in the expected final image: sensors with hexagonal element displacement, for example, record information for each of their hexagonally-displaced cells, which a decoding software will eventually transform into the rectangular geometry during "digital developing". File contents Raw files contain the information required to produce a viewable image from the camera's sensor data. The structure of raw files often follows a common pattern: A short file header which typically contains an indicator of the byte-ordering of the file, a file identifier and an offset into the main file data Camera sensor metadata which is required to interpret the sensor image data,