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Raw Therapee 3 Is Now Free Software
kantier writes "The only (as far as I know) usable and free (as in beer) program for processing RAW photos outside Windows or OS X is now also free as in freedom. From version 3 onwards, the code is licensed under the GPL v3. The main developer's reasons for opening up the program are a lack of time/resources for full dedication, and a lack of interest in some parts of the program (likes to fiddle with image-processing algorithms, not so much the GUI part) — so the F/OSS model seems to be a perfect fit for this project."
He opened up the code so other people could work on the GUI? This will end badly.
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
GPLv2
There is a gimp plugin that provides a very nice front end for it.
They've been in Debian for years.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The only (as far as I know) usable and free (as in beer) program for processing RAW photos outside Windows or OS X... DigiKam was the only one I knew about for AGES before I heard of Raw Therapee.
What about rawstudio and ufraw? I have used all three and I can say that while I like the features that rawtherapee has I like it the least overall. Everything is so slow that working on a RAW image takes forever. Rawstudio has the least amount of features but is very fast and the SVN version has added a few very important features. It is currently my favorite. UFRaw is nice but the interface isn't as clean as rawstudio and there is no batch processing. Every image has to be opened separately.
Time makes more converts than reason
What does it do that puts it in a different category than Rawstudio or UFRaw?
yp.
Great news. For those who don't know, a digital camera's sensor is actually a monochrome sensor. It is not a true color sensor (except for Sigma cameras). Each seperate sensor cell (sensel) has a colored filter placed over it. So the color is actually calculated by compariing each sensel's value with the adjacent sensels. Thus the demosaic process is very important.
All digital cameras have a built-in processor that processes the raw data the creates a JPEG file. But the JPEG file has less data (8-bit vs. 12 to 14 bit RAW) and suffers when heavy post processing is applied. Thus most pros shoot in raw, as you can image PhotoShop, Lightroom, Aperture and others can do a much better job than the built-in processor.
The availability of a RAW converter for Linux is a big deal. Without it, Linux is very limited it its usefulness to photographers.
Might GIMP soon include RAW conversion? I sure hope so.
Place nail here >+
It doesn't say it's the only one, it says it's the only usable one.
As any True Scotsman could tell you, that's a highly significant difference.
(seriously though, I'm a die-hard UFRaw user - it does everything I need it to, although it is a little slow... I've never tried RAWStudio, and I can't as it doesn't support my camera.)
RAWTherapee uses dcraw under the hood.
Changes to the underlying version of dcraw are referenced in the version history on the project website's front page
http://www.rawtherapee.com/
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why do people persist in uppercasing "raw" as if it were an acronym??? I suppose if you wanted to be sure people realized you were using a technical term, you could capitalize it: "The file is in Raw Format". But uppercase???
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Yeah, the free software troll generator is still inferior to the proprietary solutions. Sorry about that.
Raw Therapee is a frontend to DCraw, which has been around for at least 5 years.
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
The challenge isn't demosaicing the images, nor is there a need for the user to have control over it, assuming it works properly. It's reading the file format; Nikon encrypts theirs, and everyone else changes their formats seemingly with every new model/model year. Makes for an annoying moving target for most of the programs which support raw images, and the entire reason Adobe created an open raw image format, which few companies have moved to support.
Please help metamoderate.
Yes, because creating a command line interface requires such advanced design skills.
. It is not commonly known, but dcraw is the basis of the decoding engines of almost all raw converter software (including Photoshop, LightZone, RawShooter, etc.).
It's not commonly known because it is just plain wrong. Photoshop and Lightroom use Adobe Camera RAW.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why do people persist in uppercasing "raw" as if it were an acronym???
It is an acronymn. RAW = Really Awkward Workflow ;-)
Actually when I use an SLR I almost strictly shoot RAW these days, because while it can be a pain it's worth it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Bibblepro is a great commercial RAW converter that runs quite well on Linux. I've been using it for several years and really like both the job it does and the options it gives for structuring your workflow.
Not to detract from this new open source tool (which I look forward to trying out), but I like to point out that there is at least one really high quality tool for Linux users already.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Epic fail? This guy GPLs his software and you say "Epic fail"? I don't think it should matter what his reasons are, we should be happy that a formerly closed source application has embraced open source.
It's not commonly known because it is just plain wrong. Photoshop and Lightroom use Adobe Camera RAW.
Adobe Camera Raw, as well as most of the other commercial software which decodes raw images, used dcraw source and probably still uses much of that code. The license for dcraw permits it, and Dave Coffin is pretty proud of that. He should be- his code is used worldwide by millions of photographers.
Google around, bud. You can find dozens of articles, as well as Dave's resume, talking about this. He lists the dozens of programs which use dcraw, too, on the dcraw homepage.
Please help metamoderate.
The third (but maybe the most important) reason of switching to GPL is that our baby reached the age (10 month old) when he needs his father more and more. I dont want to disappoint him :). With more developers involved the development process will hopefully more smooth and wont stop when I am busy.
You might dislike the workflow of Ufraw, but there is no question about it being usable.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Unbelievable? You don't know many photographers, I take it. Open source is nearly invisible to that group.
Most of the attention is focused on Photoshop, followed by LightRoom and Aperture. The OEM products (like Nikon's Capture NX) fit into the also-ran category, with all the other products finding it hard to gain any attention at all.
I run Linux and BSD servers, yet I had no idea GIMP had RAW plugins. I only use GIMP (actually GimpShop) on occasion. But professional photographers (and I am one) need a complete workflow package, and that doesn't exist on Linux (as far as I know). That includes RAW conversion, editing, asset management, and print control and accounting. There's a reason most pros use Macs for that stuff. When you pay US$1000 for a set of ink cartridges and by paper in 100 ft rolls, you look for ways to control your costs and account for product usage.
But I want to be able to point beginners at open source software, and was hoping GIMP would be able to support RAW conversion. Frankly, I wasn't paying much attention to where it all stood, so the responses have been helpful.
Place nail here >+
No "failing" just means something different in New York and California. In California if we have to reduce the quality of our schools and public services to that of good 'ol Red State like Alabama we consider ourselves Bankrupt. In Alabama they consider it a boom year.
Perhaps it's the way you decided to criticize him. Especially considering that in the text you quoted he shows he's nothing but naive when he states his baby, "needs his father more and more." You also don't realize that opening the source allows people who are experiencing problems to sift through the code and fix it for themselves.
Such naivety!
1. Author is very lucky he's had so much time on his hands up to the 10 month mark with his son. I've had very little time to myself since mine was born (almost 18 months). I think he's about to learn how much time and effort raising a child takes.
What? You don't know anything about the guy, what his setup is, who he's living with, who else is involved with the child. And yet you're judging him based on a throwaway comment that basically is only there to say: "there's other stuff in my life".
2. I can't believe the author of such a mature and well known product has come up with the line "believe it or not, RT is stable on my PC". Or that he believes the first thing any other programmer is going to want to do is reproduce bugs they aren't experiencing themselves. Epic fail.
Or... he might be talking about the people who are experiencing bugs but who are also developers? What's your point anyway? Do you think he shouldn't even offer the source because obviously nobody else is interested? Or that he should have killed off the project in favour of his son when he was born? His message sounds an entirely reasonable response to the situation to me. "Epic fail" my arse.
or the developer, he seems to be completely cured of the idea that he can become rich writing closed source software. I just hope he's not suffering from MoWiGRiQiS (Monty Widenius Get Rich Quick Syndrome) because then we'd have to make rawhide out of his sorry ass.
What I'm getting from that is that developers need to just get rid of the idea that they'll get rich, ever, doing anything.
Developers do like reproducing bugs. That makes them much easier to fix.
Some people just like to help make something better. You'll find such people working on OSS projects.
Raw conversion tool for Linux is good news, but the thing that really seems to be lacking is colour management. I'm a serious hobby photographer (exhibited and published), and I use Photoshop on Windows. Heresy on here? Well, it does colour management properly and supports profiling hardware. The Gimp is a great piece of software, and probably beats Photoshop Elements, but I need the pro features of Photoshop (mainly back to colour profiles again).
I'm a couple of years out of date on the state of the art under Linux, so await correction if things have changed recently.
And before anyone suggests a Mac would be a better option, I just can't justify the price premium.
Incidentally, since I returned to Windows out of need, for the photography, I've found everything else I need - I use WAMP for my web development, I've got Perl, there's cygwin if I really need it; at this point, the actual OS is pretty much irrelevant as long as I can get the userspace tools I need.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
I've never looked at digiKam. Looks pretty cool. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
Place nail here >+
Or perhaps slashdot is full of idiots who can't handle a point of view that doesn't coincide exactly with theirs. The author is being naive, and has made a couple of very silly comments. Pointing that out doesn't take anything away from his work.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer