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.
I much prefer the control darktable gives me now.
One of my complaints dealt with how unintuitive the sliders are. There's no additional control gained by making the UI widgets difficult to deal with.
Another dealt with trying to set color temperature. There are two places color temperature can be set and they'll both conflict with each other. The newer module is absurdly complex. It's great if you're writing a dissertation on color rendition but less great if you're trying to be productive.
Sure there's more control offered by having ten different demosaicing algorithms to choose from. Unfortunately I can't think of a time when I've needed or wanted that control. Maybe if I shot Fuji or Sigma. But I don't. And most folks don't.
Presets and history are a nightmare. Items in the history widget get aggregated so it's difficult/impossible to pick out individual steps. If you give labels to the actions in a preset (my terminology is off because I've not used DT much in a while)… sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't and things don't appear to pick up the label/group/whatever it's called. If memory serves I had to apply presets in one module to have them visible in the develop module.
The vestigial DAM stuff… ugh.
There's no obvious A/B split views.
Perhaps the most obnoxious thing is that DT shamelessly apes the Lightroom interface but in reality behaves almost nothing like Lightroom. There's a TON of complexity for little-if-any improvement in outcomes.
> Another dealt with trying to set color temperature. There are two places color temperature can be set and they'll both conflict with each other.
There are at least three colour temperature / white balance controls in RT; more if you count output colour space primaries, Lab space curve, etc. as ways of creative white balance control.
I’m not sure I see any particular conflict between them. They all do different things; some of them are more relevant if you want to achieve the most precise representation (e.g., you are digitizing analog prints or paintings), others are more relevant if you are going for a creative look of your own.
It’s probably best to consult RawPedia[0], but as far as I understand:
— One of them controls raw data interpretation, and affects how different tools work down the line (e.g., highlight recovery or targeting sky with wavelets). As far as I understand, you probably want to keep this one technically correct and as close as possible to the true neutral white/grey point; at this step you are helping the tool do the rest of its job and not trying to achieve a look. If you use a colour card, a DCP profile, etc., then you know exactly what to set White Balance controls to.
— There are a couple of controls under CAM model, which you may or may not be using depending on your profile. With scene illuminant you set… well, scene illuminant (the light you have in your scene), and viewing conditions allow you to shift colours to make it look right if you know your photo will be viewed in an environment with particular light.
— Then, of course, you have dozens of different ways of creatively controlling perceived white balance via different curves or CLUT; I think these are most handy if you are going for a look.
I don't have DT under hand to check, but there are two controls which, if active at the same time, will produce a warning along the lines of "wb is already set in [the other control]".
edit: I think [0] describes the issue
[0] https://discuss.pixls.us/t/white-balance-applied-twice/34949
I tried Rawtherapee first as they actually sign their (macOS) app. Unfortunately it was too unstable to be useful.
I have never seen Lightroom (or C1, for that matter) as compelling at all ever since I started using RawTherapee. Unlike, say, InDesign, which is legitimately a difficult to replace professional tool with incredible capabilities, Adobe’s raw image processing offering looks incredibly dumbed down.