The best raw image processing tool I know is called “RawTherapee”. It was developed by one or more absolute colour science geeks, it is CLI-scriptable, its companion RawPedia is a treasure trove of information (I learned many basics there, including how to create DCP profiles for calibration, dark frames, flat fields, etc.), and not to make a dig (fine, to make a bit of a dig) you can see the expertise starting with how it capitalizes “raw” in its name (which is, of course, not at all an acronym, though like with “WASM” it is a common mistake).
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.
IME GUI is mainly important when you craft a new profile. In many workflows, you don’t do it very often. I create a profile once and then apply it to hundreds of frames without launching the GUI at all or mostly using it just to preview how the profile works with a particular frame and make a couple of minor tweaks.
I used RawTherapee a ton, but changed to Lightroom because the denoising is so much better. (I’m sure a more expensive camera would also help here, but I have what I have.) Now that I’m used to Lightroom it will be hard to switch back.
Because those open-source editors are made by coders, not photographers.
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 mostly prefer RawTherapee's processing, with one exception: Darktable's stupidly good "filmic" emulation can beautifully recover overexposed raws that I thought were trash. It manages to make it easy to shift the entire scene one or two stops darker with just a few clicks (yes, there is data up there in raws).
I have not found an equivalent mechanism in RawTherapee. Does anyone know if it has an equivalent tool?
I can see that it would not work well for cases like painting over parts of the image, which Lightroom et al. allow with ease. If you try to be “holistic” in your raw treatment and like me at most do a graduated filter or mask by colour, RT works well enough (the latest versions improved it a lot, too).
RawTherapee is great in most ways, except that all of the curves for adjusting anything have absolutely catastrophically bad handling. It's so amazing having access to the Lab colour adjustments but the sliders are abysmal, impossible to make any kind of precise adjustments, impossible to reset an individual slider/point back to it's default placement, impossible to undo the last action without resetting the entire widget to its default state. It's unusable, and I'm convinced that the popularity of it would skyrocket if they'd finally just sit down and address that it's miserable to use. I would drop lightroom in a heartbeat if they made them even a little bit better.
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.
> you can see the expertise starting with how it capitalizes “raw” in its name (which is, of course, not at all an acronym, though like with “WASM” it is a common mistake).
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.
HDR output is present in ART, which is a fork of RawTherapee. But it is not really usable, as the preview will show the beyond-SDR areas as pure white or something like that. I.e., you will be working blind.
Hey congrats on the app! This is just what I'm looking for :)
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?
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).
Yes you are completely right. This part is definitely not optimal yet. I haven't had lots of Tauri / Rust experience before this project.. it's on my todo list to improve. While trying to use the asset localhost protocol I ran into a lot of permission issues.
Thanks for trying out RapidRAW and for the feedback. Currently I optimized the app to load small-medium sized folders (e.g. 1-300 images). Its expected that the app lags for folders with more images.
Its a high priority to optimize the loading speed of large folders and you can expect an improvement in the coming days.
If you haven’t tried ansel: https://ansel.photos/en/ or darktable: https://www.darktable.org/ I’d recommend trying them out - they are the current open source raw editing apps that perform well that are out there. It could be that this app is competitive with them, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet - but both ansel and darktable run well on my M1.
While certainly an impressive effort, it's not even close to competitive yet. As is pointed out in a comment on [1] and as can be seen from the rat piss yellow in the sky, the algorithms are very much on the naive/simple side of things.
Will def keep an eye on things. If theres one 'must have' feature I can request, luminosity masking? Its hard to go back to raw editors that dont have it.
Its not the end all or be all to masking (ie color, saturation masking, etc) but is def one the most useful to have access to without having to bust open PS or similar.
Already having a workflow for AI based subject masking is def nice to see.
I'm glad there are an abundance of visual overviews in the readme. Too many readmes about GUI programs lack them (or they'll point to a site which still lacks a clear indication of how it behaves).
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.
Check out color.io for reference. It is a color grading focused app but nevertheless has bells and whistles for many workflows regarding raw photos. The thing is that it is offline, runs on browser, and is much faster than Rawtherapee or Darktable on my aging PC.
It’s not "web" in a way you mean that, it uses rust and gpu processing very heavily, up to the point where it just launched by web browser and that’s it
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?
Readit News
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.
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?
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.
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).
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
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QymsCRNRHE
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?