[syyrmb]

Thanks for that. It sounds like a good way to save some default settings that will get the most out of my custom DCP as a starting point.

Until now I've been using Focus Magic for upsampling, which I believe scales to the Lanczos kernel (but I could be wrong). Recent experiments with the trial versions of Paint Shop Pro's AI upsampling and Topaz Gigapixel have produced results that look better to my eyes, so it's really the upsampling possibilities that are making me want to switch to a platform that can do AI without a monthly fee to Adobe. But now that you've mentioned that RawTherapee upscales to the Lanczos kernel I'll have to give it a try.

As for wavelet denoising, that one might be beyond my conceptual level to really understand. I sort of get hard and soft thresholds, but beyond that. . .

(Edit: It's the point where my limited maths becomes a problem. I can understand a lot of things on a conceptual level, but there comes a point where you really have to grock the maths, and I'm sad to say that I've got a fairly low ceiling for that.)

Who'd have thought that switching raw converters could be so complicated? I'll have a look at the Andy Astbury tutorials that you've mentioned.

I've watched a recent video by Andy Astubry where he compared Gigapixel AI, Adobe Super Resolution and RT'S Lanczos upscaling, he said Gigapixel gives too few controls, applies noise reduction even if you turn the Suppress Noise slider to 0, the result "good" except it cost $100. Adobe (or RT)'s result, with a little tweaking in PS, is just as good. I tested one image with RT's post-resize sharpening enabled and find the result good (maybe a little oversharpened, but you can just tune down the settings).

[vonBaloney]

Adobe SR is nowhere near as good as Gigapixel, at least for images that Gigapixel works well for (which is not everything). So Adobe could be fall-back I guess. (i.e. when Gigapixel works well, it blows the Adobe out of the water) I hear good things about RT -- pre-Gigapixel we would use manual step-wise upscaling in Photoshop -- probably similar results to Lanczos in RT. Any significant upscaling is at this point still definitely a process you have to supervise and carefully check your results no matter what tools you use.

[Dartmoor Dave]

Thanks for all the helpful input folks. After doing some direct comparisons between RawTherapee and Camera Raw I definitely prefer the results from RawTherapee using my custom DCPs. Love having the ability to save pp3 presets and turn raw processing into pretty much a one click job.

Initial impressions of the Lanczos upscaling in RT are that it works brilliantly. I haven't done any direct comparisons against the Paint Shop Pro AI upscaling (which is the only one I've got at the moment) so that should be interesting when I get round to it.

Also loving the deconvolution sharpening in RawTherapee. Looks like I might have finally found a Camera Raw alternative that I can live with.

[BigMackCam]

Thanks for all the helpful input folks. After doing some direct comparisons between RawTherapee and Camera Raw I definitely prefer the results from RawTherapee using my custom DCPs. Love having the ability to save pp3 presets and turn raw processing into pretty much a one click job.

Initial impressions of the Lanczos upscaling in RT are that it works brilliantly. I haven't done any direct comparisons against the Paint Shop Pro AI upscaling (which is the only one I've got at the moment) so that should be interesting when I get round to it.

Also loving the deconvolution sharpening in RawTherapee. Looks like I might have finally found a Camera Raw alternative that I can live with.

I'm glad it's working out well for you, David

One thing that used to frustrate me with RT is that a lot of adjustments - noise reduction, sharpening, etc. - are only applied when viewing at 100% reproduction... so when working on a high ISO shot at, say, 50% reproduction, the effects of noise reduction can't be assessed. However, it turns out to be a smart choice by the developers, as it really improves performance. Because of this, I can use it on my recently-purchased 2012-vintage, low-spec, dual-core PC with just 4GB RAM, running Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS, and still get acceptable performance for occasional photo processing.

I do think that noise reduction at very high ISOs is a little lacking, resulting in some colour tinting - but I'm still learning, so it may be that I can tweak something and improve the results. That aside, I think RT is a fantastic piece of software...

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 08-10-2021 at 04:51 AM.

[biz-engineer]

I gave up using a custom DCP in RT for my K1, because the DNG embedded camera profile provided a better baseline for creating HSV corrections profiles that replicate the color rendering of camera JPEG styles.

[BigMackCam]

I gave up using a custom DCP in RT for my K1, because the DNG embedded camera profile provided a better baseline for creating HSV corrections profiles that replicate the color rendering of camera JPEG styles.

Interesting. Of course, the results of using custom DCPs are entirely dependent on their quality... but, assuming you created dual-illuminant profiles in relatively accurate lighting, using an approved colour chart, avoided glare from the chart, and got your exposure correct such that whites in the straight-from-camera reference JPEGs were at the correct level, I'm surprised it didn't work out for you. Then again, I've not tried to replicate the rendering of in-camera JPEG styles... I'm only interested in obtaining a baseline that is either (a) similar output to my Samsung GX-10 / Pentax K10D, or (b) colour accurate, and I work from there...

[ThorSanchez]

Interesting. Of course, the results of using custom DCPs are entirely dependent on their quality... but, assuming you created dual-illuminant profiles in relatively accurate lighting, using an approved colour chart, avoided glare from the chart, and got your exposure correct such that whites in the straight-from-camera reference JPEGs were at the correct level, I'm surprised it didn't work out for you. Then again, I've not tried to replicate the rendering of in-camera JPEG styles... I'm only interested in obtaining a baseline that is either (a) similar output to my Samsung GX-10 / Pentax K10D, or (b) colour accurate, and I work from there...

All I know is that using the latest K-3 Mark III DCP profile results in much more realistic reds than not using it. RT + K-3 III without the DCP means reds are weirdly oversaturated in many cases.

[Dartmoor Dave]

My own DCP efforts are aimed at satisfying my personal aesthetic preferences rather than any sort of strict accuracy.

I start out with a colorcheck card shot at 6500K and use the "chart" function in Adobe Profile Editor to get a baseline profile. Then I load DNGs of various scenes into Profile Editor and tweak the profile so that greens in particular are rendered in a way that looks natural to me. I've ended up with two standard profiles that I'm using at the moment: one intended mainly for Dartmoor shots with the emphasis on naturalistic greens, and another one for people shots because the Dartmoor profile tends to make skin look too yellow.

Neither of them are anywhere close to what an expert in colour science would consider to be accurate, but that's not what I'm aiming for.

[Serkevan]

All I know is that using the latest K-3 Mark III DCP profile results in much more realistic reds than not using it. RT + K-3 III without the DCP means reds are weirdly oversaturated in many cases.

Overly strong reds, particularly on skin tones, are my one and only pet peeve with Pentax colours... but I gotta say that RT is MUCH better than Lightroom with it. I've moved from the Adobe program to RT almost completely as a result... really liking the results so far to be honest.

Obvious shoutout to SquirrelMafia, adding the Natural colour profile to RT has been miraculous and I'd have to use a piolet to climb that documentation wall by myself otherwise...

The only thing I'm missing from RT is the possibility of using grad filters for more than outright exposure modification, and adjustment brushes... I've heard Craig mentioning Affinity, any other options there that you fine peeps recommend? I don't always use those features, but it's nice to be able to remove a dust spot or adjust the shadows in a specific area...

[syyrmb]

Overly strong reds, particularly on skin tones, are my one and only pet peeve with Pentax colours... but I gotta say that RT is MUCH better than Lightroom with it. I've moved from the Adobe program to RT almost completely as a result... really liking the results so far to be honest.

Obvious shoutout to SquirrelMafia, adding the Natural colour profile to RT has been miraculous and I'd have to use a piolet to climb that documentation wall by myself otherwise...

The only thing I'm missing from RT is the possibility of using grad filters for more than outright exposure modification, and adjustment brushes... I've heard Craig mentioning Affinity, any other options there that you fine peeps recommend? I don't always use those features, but it's nice to be able to remove a dust spot or adjust the shadows in a specific area...

RT 5.9 will have local adjustments that allows you to adjust certain parts of the image, and you can use it to control shadows in an area. It will also have a spot removal tool. Unfortunately you still can use one graduate filter only, but I guess having 2/3 of pet peeves resolved is still good. BTW if you can't wait for the official release of RT 5.9, you can download the nightly build at Release Automated Builds · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub (though it's not up-to-date due to some bugs) or read RawPedia guide and build the program yourself. That way you can play with these new features and see if it's good enough for you.

[Serkevan]

RT 5.9 will have local adjustments that allows you to adjust certain parts of the image, and you can use it to control shadows in an area. It will also have a spot removal tool. Unfortunately you still can use one graduate filter only, but I guess having 2/3 of pet peeves resolved is still good. BTW if you can't wait for the official release of RT 5.9, you can download the nightly build at Release Automated Builds · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub (though it's not up-to-date due to some bugs) or read RawPedia guide and build the program yourself. That way you can play with these new features and see if it's good enough for you.

Oh my, this is great to hear. Hope the release date is not too far away!

[ThorSanchez]

Overly strong reds, particularly on skin tones, are my one and only pet peeve with Pentax colours... but I gotta say that RT is MUCH better than Lightroom with it. I've moved from the Adobe program to RT almost completely as a result... really liking the results so far to be honest.

Obvious shoutout to SquirrelMafia, adding the Natural colour profile to RT has been miraculous and I'd have to use a piolet to climb that documentation wall by myself otherwise...

The only thing I'm missing from RT is the possibility of using grad filters for more than outright exposure modification, and adjustment brushes... I've heard Craig mentioning Affinity, any other options there that you fine peeps recommend? I don't always use those features, but it's nice to be able to remove a dust spot or adjust the shadows in a specific area...

(Edit: I should read the whole thread before posting as syyrmb already mentioned all this and more.)

Local adjustments like spot healing and masking, and (IIRC) things like graduated filters are in the current dev build which should make it into 5.9 or certainly 6.0. Not sure of the timeline for that, but I'm checking the discussions at Pixls.us pretty often to see if they have more information.

[house]

I always run dev version of RT and I've not had any serious issues. One annoying bug at the moment though is that applying .pp3 profiles delete local adjustment spots.

Local adjustments are very powerful but also a GUI challenge that the current dev team struggles with. Still increadibly useful in its current form.

The automatched (rt built in) profile clearly delivers more accurate colours than Pentax profiles. Just turn off that "Look table" in the colour management module. That setting is some extreme velvia shit and is on by default!

I actually find vanilla auto matched a bit to vivid even though its accurate. I therefore often use the Pentax embedded profile.

[syyrmb]

Oh my, this is great to hear. Hope the release date is not too far away!

as ThorSanchez said, Local Adjustments tool has graduated filter, so technically you can apply infinite amount of GF now. I didn't know that, so I stated "you still can use one graduate filter only", sorry about that. As for release date, nobody knows, probably still a few months away from a public beta release, since one dev 3 months ago suggested that RT 5.9 is long overdue, and release a quick beta version would help.