Originally posted by ChristianRock And you have used RawTherapee in the past, haven't you? How do you compare the two if you have? Both in terms of usability and results.
I've only used the Windows build of RawTherapee (not sure if it differs much from the Linux version?). I think it produces great results. Noise reduction is very capable when used properly, and that's one of my main requirements in a good RAW developer. Unfortunately, that noise reduction isn't shown on anything less than 100% reproduction (for performance reasons, I believe) - which is a problem for me, as I like to have a reasonably accurate representation of images at all reproduction sizes (I'll often do general editing at 50% reproduction or smaller, before going into detailed adjustments at 1:1. Furthermore, I'm not a big fan of the user interface - the ergonomics don't sit too well with me. It's not bad by any means, but not my favourite. All of this said, I'd be perfectly happy to use RawTherapee, and still have it installed in my main Windows 10 partition.
As for Darktable... the current Windows beta isn't to my liking, and I would definitely choose RawTherapee instead at this point in time. The current Linux version, though, is another matter entirely... I'm really impressed. It's stable, fairly quick (very quick if you have a half-decent GPU), has a lot of great tools that - for the most part - work extremely well, and the user interface is really well thought out and polished. One of my favourite features is the blending capability: In addition to setting the strength of most tools, you can adjust how much the result is blended with the original image - by default, it's 100%. I'm finding this particularly effective with noise reduction and sharpening, where setting a higher strength of effect but with reduced blending can produce really appealing and very natural-looking results.
So, for me, Darktable 2.2.5 under Linux wins. It's a slick, mature, pro-quality tool that feels very intuitive to use (especially if you're coming from a Lightroom). In fact, I'm beginning to prefer it to Lightroom 6 in many ways, and I certainly didn't expect that. But again, I do think RawTherapee is a very decent option, especially if you judge it primarily on the quality of output (and that's what really counts, when all's said and done)