[Liney]

There have been a lot of issues with the mac version.

RawTherapee - New 5.8 Windows Installer, macOS Build Ready
^ Supposedly the new version is ready now.

RawTherapee - New 5.8 Windows Installer, macOS Build Ready
^ A thread about the macOS issues. A member by the name of carlos1960 said that the latest version was working perfectly on this mac, but you'd probably have to see is it'll work on your mac.

Thanks for that, I followed the instructions this time and it appears to have worked

[teiki arii]

I tried the 5.8 RT version and unlike the 5.7 version, it works!
Thank very much to the RT community. Best regards.

Edit: on MacOS.

[ThorSanchez]

The biggest change is a new Capture Sharpening setting in the latest development build. This setting will be available in the next 5.8 version. If you're running the 5.7, it's going to ignore anything with Capture Sharpening. There's a new PP3 file in the TSM - PP3 Optional that will enable it. That or you can just go to the Raw tab & enable it yourself.

I was about to type up a post asking how folks have been using capture sharpening, and what each of the parameters do. But I caught myself and went looking for some answers first:

Pixls thread on how to use capture sharpening.

Draft documentation from Github on capture sharpening.

I haven't gone through all of it yet, but thought it would be nice to have some references in this thread.

[yucafrita]

I am not sure if this was posted here somewhere but it's maybe interesting for people like who struggle with the interface of Raw Therapee.

There is a fork of RT out, called ART (read about it on german Pentaxians forum):

agriggio / ART / wiki / Home ? Bitbucket

Claiming it's easier to use from the interface perspective. I can second that. I've tried RT several times but I just dont get the interface. Same for Darktable, btw. Both programs are very powerful but I am overwhelmed by the features and the handling.

ART looks cleaner and I have very few questions atm to get things done. Since it's a fork, I presume all config, profiles (need renaming) and stuff will work the same as RT although there are some changes or additions.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

UPDATE!


I've uploaded some PP3 files with some minor revisions to NR, sharpening, & other stuff.

I also have some Windows 64bit builds on my Google Drive.


Have fun!

[The Squirrel Mafia]

Some random thoughts.

I've been playing a lot with RawTherapee & Pentax Digital Camera Utility 5 lately. It used to be that I couldn't quite match the colors of PDCU5 with Rawtherapee, but as of lately, I have noticed that I can match & even supercede PDCU5 colors with RawTherapee. I typically use the Pentax K-3II .dcp files from the Adobe DNG converter with my K-50 camera. It's basically the closest match to my K-50 & the closesT match to the PDCU5 output. Although RawTherapee might contain a bit more color noise at high ISO, it can definitely hold it's color against PDCU5. There are instances where PDCU5 will completely "bleed" colors into other colors. Like when photographing people & their teeth are pink instead of white. On the other hand, RawTherapee doesn't bleed the colors unless I really push the noise reduction. This is more high ISO stuff like from ISO 3200 on forward.

A few months ago I shot several pictures at a party. Most of them were high ISO shots ranging from ISO 3200 to 12800 due to low light & trying to freeze some action. I ran all the RAW files through a quick batch in RawTherapee & then shared them on my Google Photos. Most of the people where blown away by the photos. None of them photography outside of their cellphone. A lot of them said things along the lines of, "My phone can't get nowhere near the color & details of your photos!"

So yeah. This program is pretty amazing given it's cost: FREE! Yup. I pretty much use RawTherapee 99% of the time for processing of RAW files. I haven't used DxO in a very long time. I can get much better photos out of RawThearpee. I only use PDCU5 to extract the thumbnail jpegs out of the RAW files for quick viewing & on rare occasions convert a RAW file for testing purposes. I'm too lazy to run a dcraw commandline to do that instead. Hahaha!

I'll be posting some new PP3 files sometime next with slightly better color abilities sometime next week. There was a setting that I left on for some time now & had completely forgot to turn it off in the PP3 files for the past few batches. It does make a bit of a difference in the colors, especially if there are lots of bright colors. In case you're wondering, it's the L*a*b Adjustments in the Exposure tab is that needs to be turned off.

OK! Have fun!

[ThorSanchez]

I'll be posting some new PP3 files sometime next with slightly better color abilities sometime next week. There was a setting that I left on for some time now & had completely forgot to turn it off in the PP3 files for the past few batches. It does make a bit of a difference in the colors, especially if there are lots of bright colors. In case you're wondering, it's the L*a*b Adjustments in the Exposure tab is that needs to be turned off.

OK! Have fun!

That's interesting. I've taken to only using the L*a*b adjustments for exposure/contrast/saturation instead of the standard exposure sliders. The L*a*b adjustments are at the top of my favorites tab. At some point I made the decision that they were doing a better job with the overall look of the photo, although I'll admit I haven't done a really comprehensive comparison. Perhaps there are situations where that isn't giving the best results.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

^ I have found that at certain times it will tend to shift some colors to a different hue. Sometimes blues will shift towards a slight green or almost to a neon color. It is a very powerful tool, but its something that should only used on a case by case basis. If I leave it on as a starting point, it will end up throwing the colors off a bit for some users. So yeah! I'll be uploading a corrected set soon.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

UPDATE!


Here are the PP3 files with the L*a*b Adjustements setting turned off. Besides that, I have changed Capture Sharpness settings for each ISO. These are fixed settings. I prefer fixed settings myself since there are times where the auto settings will either oversharpen or undersharpen images at different ISOs. There is a PP3 file that will revert to auto Capture Sharpening if you want use that instead. Nothing else has really been changed.

Like usual, there are some new Windows 64bit builds on my Google Drive that have the same thing.

OK! Have fun!

[yucafrita]

I have a question regarding RT reading Pentax raws. In the camera I can turn on several lens correction settings, and if I understand this correctly, this information in written into the raw file. I am pretty sure that DCU processes this out of the box but what about RT? Does it process the information as well or does it not care about it and instead only uses the lens correction profiles which one can apply?

[JensE]

The correction settings are applied in the DNG to JPG conversion, and DCU uses them because it has the same Pentax lens correction data built in as the camera has. Rawtherapee doesn't have the Pentax data, so it can only use the lcp files or lensfun data. This is the same situation for other 3rd party raw developers.

[ChristianRock]

The correction settings are applied in the DNG to JPG conversion, and DCU uses them because it has the same Pentax lens correction data built in as the camera has. Rawtherapee doesn't have the Pentax data, so it can only use the lcp files or lensfun data. This is the same situation for other 3rd party raw developers.

But if I shoot only RAW, and I have auto-correction on, does the RAW contain at least the information that DCU will need to apply this auto-correction, even though there was no DNG to JPEG conversion?
If that is the case, I might need to install DCU and give it a go again sometime....

[The Squirrel Mafia]

I have a question regarding RT reading Pentax raws. In the camera I can turn on several lens correction settings, and if I understand this correctly, this information in written into the raw file. I am pretty sure that DCU processes this out of the box but what about RT? Does it process the information as well or does it not care about it and instead only uses the lens correction profiles which one can apply?

Pretty much what JensE said. If you want a slightly cleaner version of the OOC jpeg with all the settings intact, PDCU5 will get you the same thing 'cause it has all the camera settings available. RawTherapee lacks this information.

I can say one thing. There are times where PDCU5 seems to mess up the colors, particularly with bright colors.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AuPT79LEO3z27JaptVtE6R14DaSUaaDQ

^ Here's a zip file containing 2 RAW files from my K-50 that show an example of what I mean. They're a couple of ISO 12800 shots that were taken at Disneyland. They're obviously not the greatest shots ever, but pay attention to the colorful lamps above the teacups. They seem to lose color in PDCU5, but remain very colorful in RawTherapee. The color alterations also happen in PDCU5 with a lot of other shots & doesn't matter what ISO the image is at. But then again, it could be that PDCU5 doesn't technically support the K-50. I don't know.

The zip file also has a PDCU5 jpeg extract, PDCU5 RAW conversion using the Bright image tone, & my RawTherapee conversion using the Bright .dcp file. The RawTherapee PP3 files & the Bright.ini for PDCU5 are in there as well. Feel free to download & compare.

[yucafrita]

Thanks a lot for the information. I will give RT another shot, especially since I want to try to DSLR scan my negatives and slides. And I find DCU a bit lacking in terms of possibilities regarding shadow/highlight etc tweaking. I just wondered if one could avoid applying extra LCPs in RT but, ok, if I find out how to copy profiles or batch-process, then I am ok.

[JensE]

Thanks a lot for the information. I will give RT another shot, especially since I want to try to DSLR scan my negatives and slides. And I find DCU a bit lacking in terms of possibilities regarding shadow/highlight etc tweaking. I just wondered if one could avoid applying extra LCPs in RT but, ok, if I find out how to copy profiles or batch-process, then I am ok.

There are multiple ways to automate this.

1. If your lens + camera combo is known to lensfun, turning on automatic corrections (lensfun) will correct what's available for that combination and is enabled below. The camera definitions seem to be lacking recent models in my RT5.8 build, but I remember having added definitions manually before, so maybe my data is outdated because of that and I need to clean it up.
2. You can define and use partial 'Dynamic Profiles' for your frequently used Camera+Lens combos, which can contain the specific LCP or lensfun selection.
3. You can leave the LCP/lensfun corrections off for the majority of pictures and just turn on automatic CA correction in Raw/Chromatic Aberration Correction. Just use profiles when they're needed - usually for distortion or heavy vignetting in documentary shots.

I'm using approach 3. - simple and avoids stretching through distortion correction, and thus loss of detail and loss of viewing angle, in the majority of my pictures. Most of my lenses are well corrected for CA, so the automatic correction is normally sufficient to get rid of most residual transversal CAs. Vignetting correction via profiles will introduce a nonuniform noise profile. I'm not sure if de-noising is done earlier in the pipeline, but even then the (residual) noise amplification in the brightened up corners is sometimes tricky to deal with. I often find that lens vignetting, being part of the lens signature, doesn't need to be eliminated.