ART is fantastic software for artists who want to work intuitively and yet don’t want to be limited in their options for developing high-quality photos.
Alberto has done us the great favor of keeping the mathematics in the background, so that we can approach and use this raw developer even without a degree in computer science.
A big thank you to him.
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Thanks! 
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Just wondering, is ART faster than Raw Therapee?
Last time I tried RT, it didn’t use any hardware acceleration and was super slow with handling large (30 & 36mpix) RAW files.
Both run on CPU only. I think they are pretty comparable speedwise. RT feels a little bit faster on my system while processing, but loses speed noticeably when I activate Wavelet stuff.
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We wish Alberto and the whole ART team a happy and successful new year.
How can we support you?
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Send lots of money! 
Great idea - but how do I find the right account?
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Thanks!
There is no right account as ART doesn’t accept donations. However, if you really need to get rid of some money, you can pick any charity you like, or send them to pixls or to any of the other projects hosted here, and I’m sure they won’t be wasted.
Best, and happy new year to you too!
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Hello Alberto @agriggio,
would you be interested in incorporating my observations from Tools into the ART Reference Manual? I ask because the very good manual is sometimes very demanding and sometimes not so easy to understand if you are not yet familiar with the subject matter. I am writing it all down to get to know ART better.
For example, notes on the Log Tone Mapping tool, which could appear in addition to the existing text:
Gain (Ev): Seems to have no effect on gradation or contrast.
Negative values reduce brightness and clipping.
Positive values increase brightness and clipping.
It behaves very similarly to Exposure compensation in Exposure:
All +x values in Gain can be completely balanced with -x in Exposure compensation.
All -x values in Gain are compensated by +x in Exposure. The image is only desaturated if Saturation control is switched on.
Hi @micha,
yes, contributions to the (surely lacking) documentation is very welcome, thanks! Regarding your notes, “gain” is exactly like “exposure compensation”. The reason for the duplication is convenience: exposure compensation happens near the beginning of the pipeline, and, most importantly, before tone equalizer and color/tone correction. The exposure compensation has therefore an impact on the luminosity masks used (implicitly) by the tone equalizer or (explicitly) by the color/tone correction tool. It has also an impact on the denoise tool, btw.
If you perform a lot of edits but later you want to tweak exposure, it might be more convenient to do so without the risk of affecting your previous tweaks to the above-mentioned tools. So, here comes the gain in log tone mapping, which happens later in the processing pipeline. But functionally, the two perform the same effect, as you observed.
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Thank you @agriggio,
I am always amazed at how quickly you react and how clearly you can explain these difficult situations.
I am grateful to be able to use ART. I would love to get involved in some way. To walk the streets of my home country and shout out: ART is great? Who would understand that?
When I have questions to better understand this raw developer, you always help - and I would like this help to benefit everyone.
And the answers remain in the forum, which is very good.
Maybe it’s enough for you if someone asks and you answer.
But a collection of FAQs or something similar would be useful to bundle all the thoughts you have formulated.
Or the great manual that Len Philpot has already started. I could add comments or additional questions there.
In short: If you have any ideas on how an interested beginner can help, please let me know.
Any contribution to the docs would be great. Even small tutorials about some of the tools could be useful, I think. Many people seem to like videos, so if you are into that…