rawpy is an easy-to-use Python wrapper for the LibRaw library. It also contains some extra functionality for finding and repairing hot/dead pixels.

API Documentation

Load a RAW file and save the postprocessed image using default parameters:

import rawpy
import imageio

path = 'image.nef'
raw = rawpy.imread(path)
rgb = raw.postprocess()
imageio.imsave('default.tiff', rgb)

Save as 16-bit linear image:

rgb = raw.postprocess(gamma=(1,1), no_auto_bright=True, output_bps=16)
imageio.imsave('linear.tiff', rgb)

Find bad pixels using multiple RAW files and repair them:

import rawpy.enhance

paths = ['image1.nef', 'image2.nef', 'image3.nef']
bad_pixels = rawpy.enhance.find_bad_pixels(paths)

for path in paths:
    raw = rawpy.imread(path)
    rawpy.enhance.repair_bad_pixels(raw, bad_pixels, method='median')
    rgb = raw.postprocess()
    imageio.imsave(path + '.tiff', rgb)

Before installing rawpy, you need to have numpy installed. You can check your numpy version with pip freeze.

The minimum supported numpy version depends on your Python version:

You can install numpy with pip install numpy.

Binaries are provided for Python 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 for both 32 and 64 bit. These can be installed with a simple pip install --use-wheel rawpy (or just pip install rawpy if using pip >= 1.5).

You need to have the LibRaw library installed to use this wrapper.

On Ubuntu, you can get (an outdated) version with:

sudo apt-get install libraw-dev

Or install the latest developer version from the source repository:

git clone git://github.com/LibRaw/LibRaw.git libraw
git clone git://github.com/LibRaw/LibRaw-cmake.git libraw-cmake
cp -R libraw-cmake/* libraw ;
cd libraw
cmake .
sudo make install

After that, it's the usual pip install rawpy.

If you get the error "ImportError: libraw.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" when trying to use rawpy, then do the following:

echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/99local.conf
sudo ldconfig

The LibRaw library is installed in /usr/local/lib and apparently this folder is not searched for libraries by default in some Linux distributions.