[JensE]

So I'm not going nuts with darktable. Hahaha! Yeah. The RawTherapee jpegs do look better overall. I think I'll pretty much only concentrate on RawThreapee for now. I'm so used to it & it just seems easier for the most part. I've already put in about 7 years of use as well.

I was in a similar spot, but figured out that both have different strengths. Taming images with a very high dynamic range, bringing them to printable contrast, is much easier for me in Darktable, in the scene-referred workflow (filmic RGB). Bringing out fine detail on the other hand is where Rawtherapee shines and of course there's no match in terms of Pixelshift processing. So I try to master both, gradually moving over to Darktable, especially for series of images. And of course well-integrated masking and multiple instances often come handy to avoid having to do stuff in a pixel-editor (gimp). I still have to try the 'local' feature branch in Rawtherapee, which is still my tool of choice for deep crops and in general for individual images. In addition, I now also used Darktable's cataloging features - just enough for me and nicely out of the way of other tools.

[teiki arii]

Hi The Squirrel Mafia,
More seriously, did you order the Pentax K-3 III?

[The Squirrel Mafia]

Hi The Squirrel Mafia,
More seriously, did you order the Pentax K-3 III?

Not yet. I'm not buying any camera gear until the end of this year. I am pretty dead set on buying the K-3III, though. It seems like they gave it a massive improvement in AF tracking capabilities, but I am waiting for the reviews to come in to really make a final decision. I also need to sell a Mazda Miata that I have sitting at my house. That's going to fund the camera plus the 2 DA* lenses that I want. Nothing's wrong with the car, but I rarely drive it anymore. Getting older I guess. Hahaha!


The only other camera that could potentially sway my decision would be the upcoming Sony a7IV, but I think I'm more dead set on the K-3III. There's something about an OVF that an EVF can't quite match. The Nikon Z6II is also another contender, but I'm still leaning more towards the Sony if I were to switch at all.

[ChristianRock]

So I'm not going nuts with darktable. Hahaha! Yeah. The RawTherapee jpegs do look better overall. I think I'll pretty much only concentrate on RawThreapee for now. I'm so used to it & it just seems easier for the most part. I've already put in about 7 years of use as well.

Yeah and I find that RawTherapee's incremental improvements have been adding up, it's quite different from just a few years ago. It's getting easier and easier to get good results (as far as I can get good results anyway, the photographer in my case is usually the weak link...)
If they added a spot removal tool to deal with occasional dust on the sensor, it would be perfect for my needs.
I'm also going to stick with it for now, and only use Darktable if I need that spot removal/retouch tool.

I can get fairly close with RawTherapee & Adobe .dcp files, but it's not 100% exact. I'd say it's more like more like 80% to 90% close. I think it's an Adobe .dcp color thing or a combined RawTherapee & Adobe .dcp color thing.

I think with RawTherapee nowadays, while the colors might not match the JPEG engine all the way, at least with the K-3 I actually think it's an improvement. I'm not a fan of the K-3 JPEG engine combined with that 24.3MP sensor. Something is off. Every JPEG setting other than Natural has a yellow tint to it.
With the K-S1 I usually get results just as good as the JPEG engine or better, but the JPEG engine is great and I often shoot just JPEG when I'm out with the family.
With the older cameras I have, RAW is always an improvement...

[The Squirrel Mafia]

^ Bright tends to give the images a yellow color cast. It's worse with Landscape. Natural is very flat. It can make the most dramatic images look quite boring. Hahaha! I only use Bright for pictures taken outdoors on a sunny day.

I have that TSM Natural PP3 file that punches up the Natural image tone & the images end up having similar contrast & brightness that you get from Bright images, but without the oversaturation & funky color cast. I use this most of the time. It doesn't work with the auto-matched tone curve, though.

[ChristianRock]

Yes, Bright has a more yellow cast than Natural usually - but it's usually not quite as bad as in the K-3. In fact, just increasing the contrast more than one notch even in the Natural setting, brings that yellow tint to the pictures as well.
I don't see it in the Raw files so I'm not sure why this happens.
I also see a lot more details in the files when developing from RAW in RAWTherapee.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

^ Weirdness. Could be the jpeg engine in the camera.

[ChristianRock]

^ Weirdness. Could be the jpeg engine in the camera.

Or maybe it's my personal taste.

The camera was on firmware 1.0 when I got it, I upgraded to the latest, did a full camera reset, so I know it's not software related... I think it's the sensor that has different sensitivity to colors. I mean, I can't use any Rawtherapee profiles that I use for my other Pentax cameras, on the K-3. If I do it, the colors are way off, a blue cast on everything (and I don't store white balance in my profiles). I think it's the base curve. But now that I have a few profiles that work well with the K-3, post processing has become pretty quick, and I can't really complain.

[Mbaez]

Or maybe it's my personal taste.

The camera was on firmware 1.0 when I got it, I upgraded to the latest, did a full camera reset, so I know it's not software related... I think it's the sensor that has different sensitivity to colors. I mean, I can't use any Rawtherapee profiles that I use for my other Pentax cameras, on the K-3. If I do it, the colors are way off, a blue cast on everything (and I don't store white balance in my profiles). I think it's the base curve. But now that I have a few profiles that work well with the K-3, post processing has become pretty quick, and I can't really complain.

Did you turn off the D-range related settings in your K3? After I did that in mine the colors, exposure, contrast and saturation are perfect in RawTherapee.

[ChristianRock]

Did you turn off the D-range related settings in your K3? After I did that in mine the colors, exposure, contrast and saturation are perfect in RawTherapee.

They are perfect in Rawtherapee... once I use the default curve instead of the one I use for the other cameras.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

UPDATE!


I've uploaded a new set of PP3 files & a Windows 64bit build in my Google Drive.

What has changed? I set all noise reduction options to the bare minimum in all ISO PP3 files. What are those settings?

Impulse Noise Reduction = Enabled
Luminance Control = Slider
Luminance = set to each ISO
Detail recovery = set to each ISO
Chrominance = Manual
Chrominance Master = .01
Chrominance Red-Green = set to each ISO
Chrominance Blue-Yellow = set to each ISO
Chrominance curve = Equalizer set to each ISO

You'll get pictures with all the fine detail intact at the slight cost of more grain as the ISO climbs. The other settings like Median Filter are still there, but they're turned off. You can manually turn them on or use the PP3 files in the TSM - Optional PP3 - Noise Reduction folder.

If you think that higher ISO images have too much fine grain, there's a PP3 file in the TSM - Optional PP3 - Noise Reduction called TSM - Advanced NR that will do the following:

Turn on Sharpening (USM is set to default in ISO PP3 files, but it will use whatever you select - USM or RLD).
Turn on Median Filter.
Turn off Impulse Noise Reduction.

How does it affect the image? It will end up giving you sharper images that will lose a tiny bit of fine detail. The Median Filter smears out the fine grain, but it will smear out some of the fine detail as well. This is mainly viewable at pixel peeping levels. This also reduces the final exported image file size. It's more for higher ISO photos than anything else. Note that this file is only to be used after the default ISO PP3 file has been applied to the image, not before. It needs the default ISO settings to work.

The Unsharp Mask & RL Deconvolution settings have been revised a bit. They're set per ISO. Sharpening is off by default in all the ISO PP3 files. You can turn it on with the appropriate PP3 file or manually.

Pentax Bright & TSM Natural PP3 files have also been slightly revised.

I think that's about it. As far as when version 5.9 will be out, your guess is as good as mine.

v5.9 Milestone · GitHub

^ They're at 55% complete at the moment, so it's probably going to be a while.

There it is! Have fun!

[ChristianRock]

There hasn't been an update to RawTherapee since over a year ago (Feb 2020)... should we be worried?

Not that the current release (5.8) isn't great!

[The Squirrel Mafia]

^ Nah. They'll get around to it. Hahaha! The newest dev build receive camera updates, so unless you have a new camera, you cam pretty much run 5.8 stable forever if you wanted to.

[ThorSanchez]

^ Nah. They'll get around to it. Hahaha! The newest dev build receive camera updates, so unless you have a new camera, you cam pretty much run 5.8 stable forever if you wanted to.

Speaking of camera updates, I now have the K-3 Mark III. RawTherapee has no problem with the DNG files, everything looks great, but there's no camera profile.

Questions... how much does that matter? What do the camera profiles do? I'm assuming it's the DCP files referred to here for color accuracy. I'm guessing at some point the Mark III will get a profile added in the dev builds and then in 5.9.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

^ It'll probably come in one of the dev updates. They're probably going to need some RAW files to do that, though. The color profile ends up being similar to Pentax Natural.