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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
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 >+
Well, it's the only one that calls itself the only one.
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
No, I called it the only one, thinking I was right (when I wrote that)
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.
. 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
No, and yet it seems only open source programs get it right 99% of the time.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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.
The windows terminal emulator software sucking hard (and it most certainly does) doesn't really have much to do with windows not having a rich, powerful, and universal set of command line utilities, with properly designed and useful flags and options. Implementing such a pathetic system years after Unix was designed is laughable.
Also, it's shell is woefully underfeatured, compared to something like zsh, or even bash. I could never see myself actually attempting to do real work with it.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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.
It may be easier, but creating a good CLI interface does require some degree of thought. If you, for example, compare a Linux console to the dismal Windows terminal and what a pain in the rear that is to use, the difference is blatantly obvious. The UNIX philosophy makes a world of difference.
Yes the difference is blatantly obvious. 10 people on earth can use Unix and Windows has engulfed the world.
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.
We persist because every similar word is also capitalized (even though most of them actually are acronyms) so it seems sensible to stay within conventions.
File formats are all capitalized:
TIFF
EXR
PNG
JPG
DPX
etc...
Colorspaces and gamma definitions are also often all caps as well:
sRGB
LOG
LIN
Since RGB is all caps it's just common practice to use RAW in all caps to make the distinction that you're referring to a bayer pattern image and not the raw unprocessed data.
Not too much of a surprise since the reason most closed source applications have poor CLI is because they just don't care about it.
When all you have is a CLI it better work. When a CLI is just a bonus feature to enable specific workflows and batch operations then the CLI is usually minimal.
Yes the difference is blatantly obvious. 10 people on earth can use Unix and Windows has engulfed the world.
So you're saying because a million lemmings run off a cliff, that's the best thing to do?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!