Raw Therapee offers a cost-free solution for converting RAW files and digital photo processing. The software is geared towards photographers looking for a powerful toolset to adjust and fine-tune various parameters of their images.
One of its key features is the ability to select high-performance demosaicing algorithms, such as EAHD and HPHD. It also allows for 16-bit/channel mode image post-processing.
Raw Therapee enables exposure control in RGB space, including auto exposure with adjustable clipping point, exposure compensation, shadow and highlight compression, contrast adjustment, and curve editor. Users can adjust white balance in RGB space, with in-camera, automatic, and spot white balance options, as well as temperature/green tint fine-tuning.
Other features of Raw Therapee include highlight recovery, shadows/highlights control in RGB space, basic luminance curve tool to modify the luminance channel in CIELab color space, brightness/contrast adjustment, and curve editor. The software also offers USM sharpening applied on the CIELab luminance channel, classical USM parameters (radius, amount, threshold), and an option to avoid noise amplification and sharpening halo control.
Raw Therapee has a color shift control in CIELab color space, allowing for color shift by shifting the CIELab "a" and "b" channels. It also has a color booster applied to the CIELab "a" and "b" channels, amplifying color channels "a" and "b" together or separately, with avoidance of color overamplification in high chrominance areas and an option to avoid clipping caused by too high color boosting.
The software also provides luminance denoising algorithm applied on the CIELab luminance channel, edge-sensitive method to preserve as many details as possible, and color denoising tool applied to the CIELab "a" and "b" channels, with classical Gaussian blur or edge-sensitive blurring of the color channels.
Raw Therapee makes it easy to switch between different postprocessing profiles and offers image flipping horizontally or vertically, rotation by 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise, and arbitrary image rotation. It also has a simple lens distortion correction, crop tool, chromatic aberration correction tool, ICC based color management, and Change History with bookmarks to support before-after checking.
The software supports several file formats, including JPEG (8 bit), PNG (8 or 16 bit), and TIFF (8 or 16 bit), and preserves EXIF data in JPEG output (except CRW files). It also allows for highly customizable output directory and automatic file naming and offers file browsing with thumbnails.
To use Raw Therapee, users need the gtk+ 2.10 series. The latest release of the software includes ICC-based color management, clipped highlight/shadow indication, reset button for the adjusters, browser showing basic EXIF data, (Last Photo) option in the profile switcher, new color scheme, splash screen, icon, and home page. It also includes a fix for the magenta highlights of Olympus cameras and many bug fixes, including file sorting.
Version 2.2: N/A