RawTherapee

Anyone here using RawTherapee?

If not, what's your favourite pp freebie? DarkTable?

I tried both of them but it was a long time ago. Luminar gavefree copies of Luminar 3&4, I used them for a long time. I think Luminar stopped to give them free now. I still have them and use them occasionally. They dont apply lens correction automatically, when I want to get uncorrected version of Leica DNG files they become handy.

Yes, for many years, currently on V.5.8 which is good enough for my purposes.

Otherwise:

Lately, I have come to prefer the GIMP 2.10 because of it's layers and masks but RT's sharpening options still rule the roost.

For quick work, FastStone Viewer does the job and XnView MP is perfect for adding IPTC keywords.

For image analysis, ImageJ a.k.a. Fiji is unbeatable.

Thx,

I have been using Faststone. I have had RT installed for ages, just got to use it to raise some deep shadows. That worked ok except it introduced a lot of noise / artifacts to the sky. Got some advice to select the area only and created a local edit (rectangle) but can't work how to stop it affecting areas outside the object in question (a bird), so now getting lightening of the sky around the bird within the rectangle...
Another forum suggested darktable has a better local edit tool, so have installed it. Must sleep now will dive in tomorrow

What is it with open source software??? - as in counter intuitive interfaces Just took me 2 minutes to work out how to open a file in darktable. And before that I clicked on the map, but then there is no way to turn it off........... [/rant]

For that kind of work, the GIMP's layers and masks is more suitable than messing with local contrast, and too it has many, many selection options.

For birds against a sky, an excellent mask can be made with the GIMP's threshold function.

Yep, the GIMP is none too easy either ...

A good site to join for darktable learning is discuss.pixls.us/ - some very knowledgeable folks there.

Thx heaps for your tips, will give it a go later today.

If you want to get serious about image editing then you will need an app that has very good support for layers, masking and selections.

If you can't make accurate selections of intricate elements then you're going to find yourself behind the 8-ball many times.

I think you'll find that to be the case to varying extents in most free open source software.

I used Raw Therapee, back when I used a Lumix LX100 and did not have a converter that handled the Raw files.

Like all Open Source software it tends to be a bit clunky and difficult to use. But I got some good results. Unless you want to do heavy manipulation it should be fine.

You need to check if it is doing the lens corrections, most mirrorless cameras seem to need.

You Lumix camera should entitle you to use the Panasonic version of Silkypix

On my Windows 7 computer, RT 5.8 accesses no less than 1,168 Adobe LCP files, presumably based on raw file metadata. Like in darktable, said metadata names may not always match RawTherapee's index. In other words, auto lens correction is not always guaranteed - but RT has a dialog that lets you find yours and select it manually.

I have tried Raw Therapee and Darktable but found both of them to finicky and slow to use. I have been using Photolab 7, Neo Luminar and an old program Photoscape X Pro but I recently updated my copy of Photo AI and that seems to have improved quite a lot since I last used it, so may give that a go again

ACDSee Ultimate
since no one has mentioned it so far, maybe you'd like to also make a free trial of ACDSee ultimate software.
It is not free to purchase, but not that expensive either, and you don't need to pay a monthly fee.
It has full support for selecting areas & using layers. It's easy to use and has RAW "converters and developers" plus photoshop like editing possibilities in one package.
I have been using it for many years and I'm happy.
There are on line tutorials, and user forums. Generally I feel that learning to use this package is easier than learning to use raw developlers and the complete photoshop suite.

For what it's worth ,....anything you have seen from me, came through ACDsee :-)

Of course, others will reccomend other software.
Usually people will tend to reccomend whatever they happen to be using themselves.
...Just as I have done here ;-)

Yes that is how it goes when we become familiar with a tool.

What are the sharpen and de-noise tools like in ACDSee?

I also use ACDSee as a raw converter and image editor. I also have DXO. As an all around editor I like ACDSee better. DXO is better at noise reduction but, you can get decent results with ACDSee. I particularly like the Light EQ feature of ACDSee.
Bob

Thanks for that Bob,

It's on a well discounted special atm - until 4th Sep. I think I will try it out.

I just noticed there is a new version (5.11) of RT out.

In the release notes they mention some tweaks / changes to Local editing. Not sure if mask creation will be any more precise.

If you're now also looking at non-free apps, Photoshop Elements with the optional 3rd party Elements+ plugin gives you access to a large chunk of the full Photoshop at a fraction of the cost.

PSE comes with a slightly watered down version of the full ACR.

PSE also comes with a fully featured DAM which enables you to do "google-like" searches to find images in your catalogue.

Both PSE and E+ have free trial periods.

I have been using the combo for around 10 years now.