RapidRAW: A non-destructive and GPU-accelerated RAW image editor

Why the decision to store edits in sidecar instead of the app’s library? I’m sure there’s pros/cons that were considered, so curious how the pros won out.

Its pretty simple to explain: Imagine you have your images in a folder and you rename this folder, without RapidRAW knowing this. It would fail to associate the edits with the image. Lightroom does it the same way. Or imagine you‘re editing on your computer and want to move to your laptop to continue editing - the edits would only be saved on the computer, if it‘s only saved in the app library.

Sidecar files (like XMP) are the industry standard for non-destructive RAW editing - they maintain file portability between different apps and preserve your original files. Library-based approaches offer better performance and organization but create vendor lock-in and complicate backups.

Aren't edits app-specific anyway? Last I tried (a month or so ago) sharing edits between darktable and lightroom didn't exactly work.

That's why I love DNGs. No Sidecar file to lose! Just one file, and still non-destructive.

My folders do not have a series of sidecars written by Lightroom. The edits are stored within Lightroom’s library. I have other programs that use sidecar files, but Lightroom does not. Maybe it’s a preference, but I’ve never looked. If I move/rename a folder Lightroom was looking at, it asks me to relink it when I next open Lightroom. It’s not an earth shattering situation to fix.

Great, so if I use an app that creates XMP files, this app is going to create a second sidecar called rrdata. So I guess I could have amended that to the original question on why create a different sidecar than the images’ default.