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LibRaw is based on the source codes of the dcraw utility, where part of drawbacks have already been eliminated and part will be fixed in future. The users of the library are provided with API to be built into their software programs.

Photographers using digital cameras know that shooting using the RAW format, where "raw" data from the camera matrix are saved to file, provides the highest flexibility for further processing. At the same time, photographers and pre-press specialists still can't enjoy the full potential of the RAW format, since most popular converters significantly and irreparably impair the quality of the initial material.

Developers willing to get rid of this sad discrepancy run into a vast diversity of formats and either have to waste time and effort on studying them, or confine themselves to a limited set of formats, or use ready solutions for extracting RAW data for furher manipulations and rendering into an image.

Among the few existing implementations of RAW converters, those based on the dcraw utility by Dave Coffin are the most used. It is hard to find a more or less popular camera that is not supported by this utility; while the implementation of RAW data extraction in dcraw is of a very high quality.