Raw Therapee 3 Is Now Free Software 162
Posted
by
kdawson
from the eye-altering-alters-all dept.
from the eye-altering-alters-all dept.
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."
dcraw (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/ [cybercom.net]
GPLv2
There is a gimp plugin that provides a very nice front end for it.
They've been in Debian for years.
Digikam (Score:2, Informative)
Only? (Score:5, Informative)
RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Only? (Score:3, Informative)
Thats not entirely accurate. Ufraw has for a long time included a batch tool called ufraw-batch. Try running that command it if you have ufraw installed and see for yourself. The idea is that you process one image in the series in the normal ufraw gui and save the changes you made as a template to a config file (thats what that button in the ufraw gui is for). Then you have ufraw-batch load that config and process as many pictures as you like. I tried rawstudio, but it kept crashing for me. Been using ufraw for two years, and it works great here. I don't think the UI is confusing.
Its command-line only, thats probably why you missed.
Re:RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:5, Informative)
It already does, via UFRaw and Rawstudio, and maybe others.
Re:The only free program for processing RAW? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it's the only one that calls itself the only one.
Re:RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
IMO, the conversion from RAW -> JPEG being done better than on the camera chip is by far the least compelling reason to shoot RAW, especially with Canons (where the on-camera processor already does a really job). 99% of people would never be able to tell the difference between the two processing options, even on a properly calibrated screen.
The real reason to shoot RAW is the world of post-processing options that shooting RAW presents you. Because of the 12 bits of color depth you have more latitude with playing with the exposure controls; if you make sure that you don't overexpose anything (i.e. you "expose for the highlights") you can compress the dynamic range a bit to bring out more detail in the dark areas. Because white balance hasn't been applied yet, you can change white balance post-processing losslessly. (There's software that will give you white-balance controls over JPEG pictures in a similar manner, but it's lossy.)
RAWTherapee is a frontend for dcraw (Score:3, Informative)
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/ [rawtherapee.com]
Not a frontend (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The only free program for processing RAW? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:3, Informative)
Only ever through import plugins that do the colour-space downsampling before giving GIMP the 24-bit colour bitmap data. GIMP's whole architecture is limited to 8-bit per channel, and would take a massive rewrite to support anything higher.
The massive rewrite is in progress, and 12 (or 16) bits per channel will be fully supported with version 3.0. The current development version is 2.7, with a release version of 2.8 on the (distant) horizon. So, real soon now...
Just plain wrong (Score:3, Informative)
. 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.
Re:RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:1, Informative)
rewrite is being done. When GEGL library taking care of non-destructive editing is mature and fully integrated, 16bit channels will be there too. Some stuff in GIMP already works with GEGL, but advanced color spaces should be implemented in v2.8, which is the next stable version after the current 2.6.
Plug for Bibblepro (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:dcraw (Score:3, Informative)
Re:RAW conversion for GIMP? (Score:3, Informative)
The sensor itself is monochrome - it just detects brightness. Overlaying it is a mosaic of coloured filters set in a pattern. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing [wikipedia.org] for a good explanation
Re:dcraw is used by almost all raw converters (Score:3, Informative)
For the record, it's DNG [wikipedia.org], not DNF [wikipedia.org].