If you handle Fujifilm Raw files long enough you learn them by their first bytes rather than by their extension. The format is Fujifilm Holdings’s. X-Trans sensor demosaicing is decoder-specific: two raw processors give visibly different detail from the same file.
| Extension | .raf |
| Usual MIME type | image/x-fuji-raf |
| Full name | Fujifilm Raw |
| Written by | Fujifilm Holdings |
How the file is laid out
The C-tree block stores the film simulation name (Provia, Velvia, Classic Chrome) that the camera applied, which is why the same RAF looks different in two decoders.
X-Trans demosaicing is decoder-specific: two raw processors render visibly different detail from the same file, and a decoder older than the body rejects it.
Telling a real file from a renamed one
There is no fixed signature at the head of this one, so identification means reading the structure instead: Not TIFF-based: a proprietary header with a C-tree metadata block followed by the film-simulate label and the raw block.
The complaint we see most with this format is not that it will not open, it is that it opens into something different from what the author intended. That is worth checking before you convert anything.
What reads this format
Installed options: Fujifilm X Raw Studio, Adobe Camera Raw / Lightroom, Capture One, UFRaw (legacy), Darktable, RawTherapee. None of them have to be the program that made the file: Universal Viewer reads it and writes nothing back.
When you have to convert
The targets people actually ask for are .jpg, .png, .dng, .tif. Each one has its own page with the settings that matter: raf → jpg, raf → png, raf → dng, raf → tif
Asked often
What opens .raf if I do not have Fujifilm?
Fujifilm X Raw Studio, Adobe Camera Raw / Lightroom, Capture One. If nothing installed reads it, the viewer above does.
Can I convert .raf without the original program?
For the targets listed above, yes. The container survives; what is lost is whatever the target format cannot hold.
Last looked over 2026-10-05 by M. Halvorsen.
Notes from the file library
Files of this kind are catalogued with the family named in the table above. The family groups them by what a file carries, not by the application that wrote it, which is why two extensions from the same application can sit in different families.
Two things decide whether a file can be opened on a machine that never had the application that made it: the header, which says what the container is, and the structure behind it, which says whether the contents can be read at all. The conversion guides listed on the page cover the targets that come up most often.
Format pages are rebuilt with each release of the toolset, and the review line at the bottom of the page is when an editor last checked the entry against a file. If a page disagrees with a file you have, send the first sixteen bytes and the build number to the support address and the entry is corrected in the next build.