How iNaturalist plugin converts images before sending? It seems to be creating seemingly identical NEF-JPG conversion as the camera itself does. I tested by sending both (NEF and camera created JPG) via plugin to iNaturalist and I couldn't see a difference in the end result - both images seemed the same after upload. Conversion tools via BQM create variable results most notably in brightness, also occasionally adding noise. I would like to find a way to create as good local NEF-JPG conversion as iNaturalist tool seems to repeatedly do (I haven't tried to read through the code) - I think all conversions are done by plugin before sending the files.
INaturalist use the JPEG embeded extraction from RAW to speed up processing. There is no demosaicing stage here. If you pre-process RAW using BQM, you can use also JPEG embeded or demosaicing. Of course results are differents. Demosaicing can be customized by settings in BQM. This is what's you need... Best Gilles Caulier
Thanks, I wasn't aware of embedded jpg withing nef but found it now. Quality is likely enough for most cases. I still have to figure out how to do good enough conversion when processing is needed. Darktable seems sophisticated but is terribly slow in my workstation, and there seems to be some issue with color management I have to fix. Initial import to digikam image editor seems relatively fast but is far from good quality. Noise is clearly present and, applied or not reduction, other details are removed too. At least in darktable my lens is not included in lensfun so likely automatic correction via digikam either doesn't do the job and I was unable to manually choose an older alternative which I have used in darktable. But the embedded jpg I think could fix many problems, however I could only find a way to use it in BQM, not for direct import to image editor for basic editing.
Solution : extract RAW JPEG embedded with BQM and load the JPEG in editor.