DEK Photography: RawTherapee Before Bed - Some Initial Thoughts

Most photographers are stuck with Adobe Lightroom. Here's an open source alternative, named RawTherapee - it's a RAW editing software for Linux.

I was quite sleepy already, but I just had to play with RawTherapee for an hour. I found an interesting shot, which I thought would go nicely in black and white and starting tweaking with (what seemed to be) thousands of modifiers to the image.

You can click for a bigger image! Don't worry, he won't run you over! Taken at 50mm, f/1.8, 1/80s, ISO 1600.

Initial observations:

• The white balance and / or color profile from my Nikon NEF files wasn't recognized at all. The image was visibly red, when imported.
• Too many possible tweaks, overwhelming first time users. Some modifiers appear to have similar effect.
• Not every tweak is visible, unless zooming 1:1, which makes the program extremely frustrating to use. Added sharpness and noise removal is only visible in the final, rendered image (unless editing only in 1:1 zoom).
• The crop tool is strange. Instead of cropping the image, it simply creates a selection and darkens the rest of the image. Again, the photographer must imagine what the final shot would would like.
• Rendering an image takes a LOT of time. I thought Lightroom was slow. And I had to render the image several times, to hit the exact blend of sharpness and noise removal.
• There are some interesting tweaks, which are not available in other RAW editing software - I found them extremely useful when editing black and white photos.

I will post a more comprehensive review later on - in the mean time, do check out my photography at #dek-photography (check "new" for all publications)!

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Check out my latest articles:

• Not Sure, But I Think the Waitress Fancies Me?
• In the Restaurant's Kitchen: Chef's Delight (Vegeterian Approved!)
• DEK Photography: Smiles in the Rain

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