Beware though that it tends to not abstract away a lot of technicalities, if you dig deep enough you may encounter exotic terms like “illuminant”, “demosaicing method”, “green equilibration”, “CAM16”, “PU”, “nit” and so on, but I personally love it for that even while I am still learning what half of it all means.
I’d say the only major lacking feature of RT is support for HDR output, which hopefully will be coming by way of PNG v3 and Rec. 2100 support.
RawTherapee is better than Darktable. But that’s a pretty low bar to clear. There are reasons people pay for Lightroom.
I threw darktable and rawtherapee on the table but without technical grit you get nowhere really fast.
It's no my wheelhouse so they are mostly in there own.
So when I mistakenly copy into the wrong folder, it's obvious which image files don't belong. So I don't need to delay while I think of the best descriptive folder name. So I don't need to sort yesterdays photos into a different folder than todays photos.
Secondly it's a matter of deleting image files. I take a look with some viewer app and use the file system to delete whatever doesn't seem worth any more attention.
Thirdly whatever trial photo software is available is probably good enough to start learning.
Another thing I noticed with RawTherapee after LR was the sloooowness. Lightroom has been super optimized to show all edits (or their preview versions anyway) in real time.
Those tools you really need for properly edit raws are hidden in blated features (multiple demosaic algorithms) or completely missing (AI masking). And UI is not user friendly.
I have not found an equivalent mechanism in RawTherapee. Does anyone know if it has an equivalent tool?
DT has a highlight reconstruction module too but RTs was superior every time I tried.
They're talking about the Filmic module which is a fancy exposure adjustment curve. I ported it to Rust for use in our internal 2D compositing renderer (not open, unfortunately). That's when I got to appreciate the work done there, really.
The gainforge crate has another port, although not with all parameters of the original algorithm, AFAIR.
The algorithm is explained in a blog post by the author of the module. [1]
Who is btw. the same guy that got fed up with DT dev and forked it to Ansel.
[1] https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/2018/11/filmic-darktable-and-...
Would really like to be able to use RawTherapee's dual-illuminant DCPs (not available in darktable).
I know it's a different space, but as a counterexample, FabFilter makes audio plugins that are the gold standard for that kind of interface and it isn't even close. Anybody making an interface for interacting with points on a curve should sit down with the free demo of FabFilters Pro-Q3 for just a few minutes to experience what's actually possible and how it should feel.
That claim does not match my experience in any way.
For example, Control Cage curves have node value adjustment to 1/1000th.
https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/General_Comments_About_Some...
Language pedantry has nothing to to with photographic image processing expertise and if anything this would be a sign that the developers care more about being "right" than what users want.
RawTherapee I uninstalled almost immediately because it crashed a few times and the UI didn't seem to jive with what I wanted to do.
Despite DarkTable's horrific interface and hostile developers I keep it around because I can often beat it into submission (but what a chore that is). And that's the thing. Even if I were shooting JPEGs DT's interface would still be a problem.
If you look at CaptureOne you can see how easy it is to edit a raw image. Most of the time it looks like the camera jpeg without having to tune anything. But then you have the options to go in depth.
Sometimes I have a photo session where everything is to my liking, just a bit of exposure and crop. Other times I shoot in night clubs with no flash and I have multiple layers of masks for a single photo.
A UI with decent defaults goes a long way into making a complex app easy to use.
Just installed it on my m1 mac and opened a folder of RAW files. The initial loading lagged my whole macbook. Couldn't even open the dock. Once the thumbnails all loaded it's better but not as buttery smooth as I would have hoped! Would love to know what other commercial apps do that make them not lag. Is it just that they're written natively?
And then it's sending these thumbnails back from rust to javascript as base64 encoded strings, not using a shared buffer: https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d97...
This is the sorta stuff that native apps mostly don't do. They don't base64 an image just to send it to a different app (react) to base64 decode it (via a third app, webkit) via a slow ipc mechanism (tauri) from itself to itself, allocating 6x the chunks of memory along the way for one bit of data (the 6x are: raw data in rust, base64 data in rust, json encoded base64 in rust for tauri ipc, json encoded base64 in javascript, base64 in javascript, raw image data in webkit to finally view).
>immensely grateful for Google's Gemini
>AI Studio's free tier
Its a high priority to optimize the loading speed of large folders and you can expect an improvement in the coming days.
Kind regards, Timon
Already having a workflow for AI based subject masking is def nice to see.
That said, they're all GIFs and each ~10-22MB. Making loading the readme larger than the program size itself. Embedding some video would be snappier.
I'm not sure what the perfect solution is, but it is hard to sync a ton of shadow files to cloud storage, versus one big catalog file.
Is the metadata in an open format, so I can take the edits to other programs?
I am glad there's alternatives to having to shell out for Light Room every month. I only need to edit RAW files after holidays!
We need an easy to use RAW editor. For a long time I used Darktable, with default settings I would get images that where close to the camera jpeg. I just had to change in what artistic direction I wanted to go. With update after update I had to fight to even get decent skin colors.
Currently on a pirated copy of CaptureOne, but would rather use something open source (Or buy something affordable)
Do you have default camera and lens profiles build in?
I'm no AI fanboy, but it's neat to see some dreams come true because of it.
Few reasons.
1. It's 100$ a year, which isn't pocket change when it's making you no revenue.
2. Apple likes to randomly deny developer accounts.
3. They have no issue with outright rejecting apps with vague reasoning.
4. Plenty of high quality raw editing apps already exist for OSX.
If someone really wants to use it on OSX you've provided clear instructions.
1. 100$ is a pocket change for many people. Depending where you live. I think it is enough of a barrier to force a thoughtful action. Also, to compare, cheapest certificates for signing windows software are like 450$/year. Microsoft has a hosted service now for $15/year, but that is still in beta. Both of those options are significantly more expensive than 99$/year Apple charges.
2. No, Apple does not deny randomly access to developer accounts. Also, this is quite besides the poin.
3. Code Signing has absolutely nothing to do with submitting your app to app store, or anything Apple has to approve of. Like, why even write about something you have no idea about?
4. True. Not sure how it is relevant.
