Raw images are unprocessed image files produced by digital cameras. They contain various types of information about your camera’s sensor, metadata.and color patterns .rwz, .srw and .x3f are some of the popular Raw image file formats. We’ll discuss them in detail and the steps to get rid of any duplication and organize them in a better way.

.rwz (Rawzor)

.rwz is a lossless compressed image file format. The contents of .rwz files are compressed to reduce storage. This file type is one of the most commonly used RAW file formats. You can store thousands of photos without much worrying about the storage space taken and transfer it to external storage media. It is considered a lossless file format because it preserves all the original information with no loss of any kind.

Rawzor SDK is available for manipulating these images. Rawzor format is used on both Microsoft Windows and Mac operating systems. The biggest benefit of using .rwz file format is that Rawzor reduces the size of your camera and photo data from 20% upto 60%. The results are much better compared to zip and rar files. Additionally, it does not result in loss of any information- including metadata, camera details and original image quality. Decompression reverts to the same state.

.srw (Samsung)

.srw is a proprietary image file format from Samsung. It is the default file format in Samsung digital cameras that contains data captured by the image sensor of your camera, image thumbnail, metadata. Your file may contain additional information such as white balance, exposure etc. The images can be further processed with dynamic colors before they can be published on the Web or printed to a paper.

.x3f (Sigma)

.x3f is a proprietary file format from the manufacturer of high-end digital cameras Sigma. When you buy a digital camera from Sigma, you obtain free access to Sigma Photo Pro software to edit .x3f files. Besides, third-party photo editors such as popular Adobe Photoshop (only traditional file versions supported), Corel PaintShop, and PhotoDirector from Cyberlink also support editing and converting native .x3f files. The file contains text property information along with image thumbnails captured by your digital cameras.

Find Duplicate RAW Photos With PictureEcho

PictureEcho is a human-like intelligent image scanner. It compares images stored on your computer for duplication. The duplicate scanning tool from Sorcim offers two scan methods-

• Exact Match: These are identical images with no differences. They are similar byte-to-byte. Use this scan method to get absolute results.
• Similar Match: These are near-identical images that are visually similar in nature. They may vary to a degree. Use this scan method to get optimum results and clean-up a large portion of your disk space.

You can select multiple drives/ directories to scan. PE gives you the option to customize Similarity Match settings to your requirement. PictureEcho can deduplicate your entire photo gallery and free-up GBs of space. Just follow the simple steps given below:

1. Install PictureEcho on your computer and run the application after completion.

2. Click on Add Path.

3. PE will prompt you to select a directory. Choose the folder that contains your image library. For example: C:\Users\Vikas\Pictures

4. Select a scan criteria from Exact Match and Similar Match.

5. Click on Start Search.

6. Once the scan is finished, you will be able to see all duplicate files with thumbnails.

7. Use the Select Duplicates button and choose your preferred selection criteria.

• Newest/ oldest images in each group
• High/ low resolution images in each group
• Most modified/ least modified images in each group
• Larger/ smaller images in each group
• Images by their directory of origin

8. Click on Select Action and choose to delete them permanently, or move to a folder of your choice.