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

(github.com)
211 points l8rlump | 6 comments | 09 Jul 25 02:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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strogonoff ◴[09 Jul 25 05:49 UTC] No.44506692[source]▶
The best raw image processing tool I know is called “RawTherapee”. It was developed by one or more absolute colour science geeks, it is CLI-scriptable, its companion RawPedia is a treasure trove of information (I learned many basics there, including how to create DCP profiles for calibration, dark frames, flat fields, etc.), and not to make a dig (fine, to make a bit of a dig) you can see the expertise starting with how it capitalizes “raw” in its name (which is, of course, not at all an acronym, though like with “WASM” it is a common mistake).

Beware though that it tends to not abstract away a lot of technicalities, if you dig deep enough you may encounter exotic terms like “illuminant”, “demosaicing method”, “green equilibration”, “CAM16”, “PU”, “nit” and so on, but I personally love it for that even while I am still learning what half of it all means.

I’d say the only major lacking feature of RT is support for HDR output, which hopefully will be coming by way of PNG v3 and Rec. 2100 support.

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babuloseo ◴[09 Jul 25 06:11 UTC] No.44506783[source]▶
I like this one its simple and easy to use
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strogonoff ◴[09 Jul 25 06:54 UTC] No.44507013[source]▶
May I ask why choose to shoot raw given simplicity and ease of use are priorities?
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inferiorhuman ◴[09 Jul 25 07:14 UTC] No.44507120[source]▶
There's no inherent usability issue with shooting RAW. My experience has been that none of the open source tools can hold a candle to the proprietary ones.

RawTherapee I uninstalled almost immediately because it crashed a few times and the UI didn't seem to jive with what I wanted to do.

Despite DarkTable's horrific interface and hostile developers I keep it around because I can often beat it into submission (but what a chore that is). And that's the thing. Even if I were shooting JPEGs DT's interface would still be a problem.

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mikae1 ◴[09 Jul 25 07:22 UTC] No.44507159[source]▶
I fought darktable for two years before feeling right at home. I had used Lightroom since it's inception. I'm happy now I invested the time. I much prefer the control darktable gives me now.
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inferiorhuman ◴[09 Jul 25 07:59 UTC] No.44507360[source]▶
It's not about not "feeling right at home". I've detailed this in other comments but it's just that DT has an abysmal interface and that the devs insist that it needs to be complex. This sort of hostile attitude is part of what spawned Ansel.

  I much prefer the control darktable gives me now.
This is a bit of a myth.

One of my complaints dealt with how unintuitive the sliders are. There's no additional control gained by making the UI widgets difficult to deal with.

Another dealt with trying to set color temperature. There are two places color temperature can be set and they'll both conflict with each other. The newer module is absurdly complex. It's great if you're writing a dissertation on color rendition but less great if you're trying to be productive.

Sure there's more control offered by having ten different demosaicing algorithms to choose from. Unfortunately I can't think of a time when I've needed or wanted that control. Maybe if I shot Fuji or Sigma. But I don't. And most folks don't.

Presets and history are a nightmare. Items in the history widget get aggregated so it's difficult/impossible to pick out individual steps. If you give labels to the actions in a preset (my terminology is off because I've not used DT much in a while)… sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't and things don't appear to pick up the label/group/whatever it's called. If memory serves I had to apply presets in one module to have them visible in the develop module.

The vestigial DAM stuff… ugh.

There's no obvious A/B split views.

Perhaps the most obnoxious thing is that DT shamelessly apes the Lightroom interface but in reality behaves almost nothing like Lightroom. There's a TON of complexity for little-if-any improvement in outcomes.

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1. Nergg ◴[09 Jul 25 08:19 UTC] No.44507482{3}[source]▶
I try to daily drive Linux but can't find a simple / nice to use RAW editor. I had high hopes for Darktable but I was astonished how bad the GUI is. When trying to delete photo, it deletes the photo under the pointer, not the photo I selected... WTF ?!? And the whole app feels so complicated... Then there's forks emerging and the dev forces are diluted in multiples applications and Adobe continues to milk its users because Open Source dev can't work together. Between Shotwell, Gthumb, Loupe, RT, DigiKam, and more... Imagine if all this efforts was done in one cohesive app ? Ok I stop dreaming.
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2. strogonoff ◴[09 Jul 25 08:34 UTC] No.44507596[source]▶
If you seek a GUI for managing/cataloguing photos, my advice would be to look for that and not a raw image processing tool that incidentally happens to also handle cataloguing (inevitably in a half-baked way).

I have never seen Lightroom (or C1, for that matter) as compelling at all ever since I started using RawTherapee. Unlike, say, InDesign, which is legitimately a difficult to replace professional tool with incredible capabilities, Adobe’s raw image processing offering looks incredibly dumbed down.

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3. Nergg ◴[09 Jul 25 09:32 UTC] No.44507927[source]▶
Yes good point. But my needs are very limited. On macOS I use the Photo app to cull, make small adjustments, and crop. On Windows there is also a Photo app that allows such basic features. They both works with RAW and works fine with my NAS mount in smb to cull directly the files (though macOS is a pain for that, doesn't play well with files, need to import in lib).

On linux, the default Gnome image viewer is nice but you can't make adjustement and when deleting a file, the file is not remove from the NAS directory (need a manual refresh). With Gthumb it works for deleting files but the crop tool and the overall app is not as nice. Anyway I'll continue to look for my perfect app or for the default Gnome viewer to update its features (I think it is in active development)

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4. inferiorhuman ◴[09 Jul 25 10:28 UTC] No.44508248[source]▶

  my advice would be to look for that and not a raw image processing tool
  that incidentally happens to also handle cataloguing (inevitably in a
  half-baked way).
Eh. No? Lightroom is a pretty darn good DAM. Maybe digiKam is at least as good, but I wouldn't know as it crashed the first time I launched it. I want to use my tools, not debug them. DT's asset management is, to put it charitably, an after thought.

About the worst thing I can say about Lightroom is that it didn't reliably work with my iPhone. Otherwise it did everything I needed in terms of tagging, presets, and organizing the pictures on the file system.

Meanwhile darktable creates freaking sidecars for every picture while it relies on an SQLite database for tracking history just like Lightroom does.

  I have never seen Lightroom (or C1, for that matter) as compelling at all ever since
  I started using RawTherapee.
Conversely Darktable is the best advert I've seen for Lighgtroom.
5. CarVac ◴[09 Jul 25 11:22 UTC] No.44508644[source]▶
Filmulator (I really need to fix the CI...)
6. Melatonic ◴[09 Jul 25 15:30 UTC] No.44511296{3}[source]▶
I windows I highly recommend IrfanView just for basic photo viewing (odd name). It's extremely fast.