Hi. A couple questions/suggestions, but first,Therapee is AWESOME!!

Software RawTherapee
1

Hello there.

I needed a something quick to download on a new machine that I could simply view some raw files with, and wound up finding an AMAZING image processing platform.

You guys did a fantastic job with this. Plenty of horse power, but ZERO BLOAT!

Ergonomic and intuitive interface. 5 stars…Raw Therapee is amazing.

My first request is to CHARGE money for a Plugin version that I can run in my other image software. I would love to have some of these functions available in a Photoshop workflow in a way that saves parameters of the Raw Therapee processes in the history panel so I can reconstruct processes later on other images.

But I have a couple questions about some of the current features in Raw Therapee.

I am using most recent build: 5.3
Windows 7 64 bit.

When loading an image the preview does not draw in all the way, and remains pixelated, I have to zoom in or out before the image looks right and become “un-pixelated”. Can I change this with a setting or re-arrange menu bars etc?

I can not see the sharpening effects at any zoom level other than 100%. As soon as I back out to 50% or 25%, etc, the image looks exactly the same as before it was sharpened. Am I doing something incorrectly?

When working on an image for first time, if I open the tone curve panel, it opens with settings from last use. Do I have a parameter set incorrectly?

Following are the suggestions that come to mind after initial usage of Therapee. Also kind of questions in case someone can tell me how to accomplish these objectives. Ill start with ones that seem more attainable.

Select color range, and alter saturation, lightness, and hue.

Raw Therapee does a fantastic job of allowing users to access refined and complex methods of color 
manipulation and alteration, that even the big names have not. I am wondering if without much extra effort 
the same algorithms that have already been implemented in Therapee for color manipulation could be
acessed by an interface panel that allowed the user to select a color range from the color spectrum, and          
perform saturation/lightness/hue changes to just the color range selected.

Full screen mode that fills entire screen and blacks out sides for image previewing.

Would it be possible to have the full screen preview fill up the entire screen, and eliminate all task bars, 
menu bars, panels, windows etc from the image?  Viewing an image in it's final form without any other 
distractions on the screen during the editing process is of vital importance to visualizing changes        
that still need to me made to the image. It also is extremely helpful to the vast amount of users out there

using 22-24 inch monitors to be able to preview using every last bit of screen real estate available to them.

Arrange Panels according to user preference.

Is it possible to allow users to position the panels that they use frequently, near each other? For example    
working on color, I often will need quick access to the global saturation, which is located under a different 
tab in the exposure section.

Those are the simple suggestions, but even without them, Raw Therapee is a stellar program, especially for free. And I would easily pay to have it as a plugin for Photoshop.

Any plan in the future to implement some kind of feature for selecting areas of the image, and applying changes just to those areas?

If so I have a suggestion that I think would be way easier to implement than how Ps and Lr do it. Just make it linear. It does not have to be like an “adjustment layer” That is constantly running in real time, hogging resources. And simply save the parameters of each selection, and what was done to that area, and the if the user wants to later alter what was done to a selection, or the parameters of the selection itself, they could simply select those steps of the process, and either delete them, or alter them, and then they could just wait a few seconds for Therapee to process the different steps.

I cant believe for decades Photoshop has bungled their history panel, by not saving the parameters of the events in the History panel, and not considering a selection to be a step that gets recorded in the history panel. Then after missing that efficient and elegant solution to the problem for so long, then they come up with “adjustment layers” that just constantly run in real time, significantly limiting the amount of selections and areas of the image that can be processed simultaneously.

It would be great after many steps of processing an image, to load a different image and import the history from the other image, and simply be able to alter just the selection events to adapt the exact same parameters from the other image to the new image.

Or even to click somewhere on their “history panel” and actually know WHAT the parameters were for an event in the history of processing that image, instead of merely the filter, process, etc that was used during that step of the editing process.

In any case. Once again GREAT JOB. on this software, and I plan on using Therapee a lot more and see which functions are intrinsic to therapee are not covered in the other software in my workflow.

I have a feeling I may wind up having to export to Therapee then back to main editor, because there will be things I cant live without that Therapee either does exclusively, or does better than the other editors.

Thanks again!

: )

2

This feature is already built in. You can cut and paste editing profiles to apply to other images.

See Batch Adjustments - Sync - RawPedia

You find the full details of all your editing history stored in the the .pp3 side-car file for each image.

3

There’s a local lab development branch which can already do that. It may not be perfect yet but it works great. See here:

This would actually be a good idea and I was about to ask for the same.

4

I’m not part of the project, but this request has been rejected in the past. If you feel there is a market for this, you can code it or pay someone to code it and do support. Its Free Software so the code is as much yours as it is anyone else’s.

It will already open an image in GIMP, I believe.

5

hi,

this is the first time I hear about this… sounds like a bug. can you describe more precisely what you do?

this is normal. some tools are only applied when viewing the image at full size. see rawpedia for more info.

this also sounds very strange. can you give more details?

would be nice but I’m afraid won’t happen anytime soon… we have too many other things to do and too little manpower already :frowning:

as others have already pointed out, there’s an “experimental” branch that does this. the plan is to integrate it in the official version “soon”, but we can’t give an estimate of what this means exactly yet.

6

I understand I can cut and paste a profile.

What I was referring to with the way photoshop handles their history panel was that it shows a bunch of steps, but when you click on that step, you have no idea what parameters were used for that step, so you cant recreate it.

And also PS doesn’t save the parameters of a selection. If you want a selection saved, you have to specify and then save it as it’s own separate file.

The ideal image editor would have a history panel that functioned like this:

Record each Event. ( adjust contrast for example) also record the parameters the user entered on that step. (Contrast: amount, sharpness: radius, and amount, hue change: changed color values, etc.)

Create a visual list where each event is represented ( PS history panel does this part already)

Give the user the ability to select any step along the way, and at least VIEW the values of the parameters that were employed during that step, but also delete that step, or alter the parameters. (Application would then need to re-process image to update the results to the newly modified changes)

Allow the user to Copy and paste steps to other images, and copy/import ENTIRE history lists to other images.

Applications:

Several photos of same model. Apply all kinds of changes to various parts of the first image, using multiple selections until image looks perfect.

Now you want all other images to look the same. So you load second image, and import the entire history panel. Image is processed identical to first image. But the selections are off, because it is a different photo.

Simply click on the first selection, choose option to enter brand new values in for that step, draw in the appropriate selection. the click “done” or whatever. Then also redraw the other selections that dont match the first image and click done.

Then click a button that says “process new steps in history list” and the application sequentially goes through each step, making the new changes and now that image has it’s own history list, and the image is identical to the first, but with appropriate new selections.

Who needs PS “actions”? Photoshop already had a history panel, if they had simply included the ability to re-apply the steps, and alter the steps at any time and resave the history list, then they would have already had an "action.

The history list for an image would be the “action”. Want to run the action on a different file? just import the history list from the file that has the desired processing.

Another application:

You learn a new sharpening routine that looks way more natural, and want to go back and apply it many images without trying to reconstruct every single step that was done to every single file, simply to resharpen them with new parameters.

Open image, delete sharpening step in history panel, sharpen with new values, or new method, plugin, etc.

With PS i always had to write down all my settings, or screen shot them, just to recreate them on other images. Ridiculous.

They did have a save history log in the Metadata. But the first option didnt record the information one needs to recreate a file.

And the second option for recording history in Metadata literally records every single thing that happens. the log will show every time the file was opened. It will show if you switch from one window another file is in, to the window of the file recording the history and vice versa.

Parsing through that information to try and go back and recreate steps that were done to an image was too brutal, and I wound up just writing down the parameters for all my steps instead.

7

I think you should spend some time reading https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com as a bunch of the things you describe are already there or don’t really apply to a raw processor (they’re pixel editor features).

8

Try to explain more. When I load a new image, the image opens up, but remains pixelated. I have to do something to the image so that the preview looks normal. I am in the habit of zooming out one click then back in one click so that the image is rendered “un-pixelated”

I did try Therapee 5.2 on a laptop and did not encounter this problem.

Should I try reverting to 5.2 to see if that fixes the problem? I would be happy to do anything I can to help you guys debug things.

Also, can I install 5.2 without uninstalling 5.3? and run it seperately? I will uninstall though and try 5.2 if that is helpful.

I assume the sidecar files in the directory with the images would be unharmed if I uninstall Therapee?

Yes when I open the tone curve panel within the Exposure panel, it defaults to the settings that I used in the last image I was processing. Its not super big deal, I just click the “reset” arrow and it zeroes out all the parameters. Effects my perception of the image briefly, but hasn’t caused a problem to the final image.

Let me know any more specific questions, or ideas I can do to help debug those problems.

: )

9

Agriggio:

I forgot to mention the laptop I tried Therapee on with 5.2 and didnt notice pixelation issue when loading an image was windows 10.

10

Aggrigio:

THIS IS SIGNIFICANT.

I just realized that issue is only happening when I open JPEGS to view them in Therapee.

When I open a RAW file, the image opens just fine, and renders “un-pixelated” immediately without me having to click on the zoom function.

So perhaps there actually is no issue, considering that Therapee is a RAW editor after all. Not a JPEG editor.

: )

11

This was a common bug in the past, but it rarely happens now. Simply clicking the main preview was enough to trigger the event which renders the preview in higher quality. Does simply clicking the main preview work for you?

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Dont know what you mean by “main preview”

I click on a thumbnail to open an image, and it opens in the editor. is there a different window I should use?

Also I discovered it is only happening when opening JPEGS.

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http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/The_Image_Editor_Tab#The_Preview_Panel

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hi Alberto. It would be interesting to see what fixes and enhancements are planned for the next release; or in the next 6 months, say. Is it possible for you to say? Or is there a summary in github you could point me to please?

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You can see the github milestones here: Milestones - Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub

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thanks!

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I must admit, I never really cared about that oddity, but I had a RT session the other day and nearly every second image started pixelated. No big deal, but it’s still as present as in the first GTK3 release.

18

I actually have this problem as well, I didn’t think about mentioning it as I was so focused on the actual processing.

Same here, I think I also had it in between processing steps. Will have to check again…

19

In RT you can save partial profiles…
What does that mean?
You have worked on your model image until it’s perfect. Now you load another image and want it to look apply the same changes except for one or two. So you save the parts of profile of the perfect image you want to apply to the other images according to the instructions here:
http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Creating_processing_profiles_for_general_use

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First to note, I was referring to what I thought was pointless about PhotoShop history log.

In particular that they dont log any of the parameters of each step/event. And more importantly that any area selections made do not get saved in the history log, so selections have to be saved as their own file.

In PhotoShop if you edit an image with many steps/processes, it’s pretty much impossible to go back to that image, and decide to apply the exact same sequence of events to another file.

With the exception of “actions” which is a convoluted way of accomplishing the task, considering that PS already has a history log.

But pertaining to Therapee, another user pointed out that a lot of my concerns were referring to the needs in a “pixel editor”, and Raw Therapee is intended to function more like Adobe Raw, rather than pixel editing.

Him/her brought this to my attention, and I agree. Not nearly the same need in a raw adjustment application.

But in any work flow for image editing, pixel editing, or raw adjustment I still think that a sequence of events is more effective, or at least and additional way to look at/quantify the process and components of complex image editing.

Having the ability to look back through the history log, and choose a specific processing event to toggle on and off, or delete said process, is helpful to establish what exactly one did to achieve a certain look, and what the cause and effect of the different processes are. And which ones were superfluous/detrimental and which ones were integral to the outcome the user was striving for.

Eventually certain patterns would emerge, as to how to achieve certain image styles, and viewing ones’ workflow as a series of steps, and specifically what series of steps, in my opinion is much quicker, and vastly more clarifying method of advancing ones editing abilities, and artistic vision, and also inventing/breaking new ground on previously unknown ( to the user or others ) methods of achieving certain visual objectives.

Essentially linear editing is a different way of looking at/solving the same problem, which of course can also be solved not looking at things in a linear way.

It would be nice to always be able to look at a history of processing events, toggle on and off different ones, and see what the effect was. And if looking at an image from a batch of images, one realizes there was a particular step they decide they should omit from the sequence of steps to achieve the image style they want, they could just delete/toggle off that step. And and achieving continuity with the other images in the batch would be as simple as opening them, and deleting/toggling that step off in those images as well, and all the images would be recreated with the exact image to image continuity as before, but each minus the particular step that was deleted, or changed to make the image better.

Creatively this also allows one to really experiment, compare, contrast, alter, the different processing steps, and UNDERSTAND the cause and effect of different processes more effectively and resolutely.

Certain collections of of processing steps would become like “Actions” and one could load a favorite sequence of steps ( history log ) and the “action” would be loaded in to a new file, but also still editable for each step in case that particular image needed slight tweaking because of of specifc needs for that image.

Photoshop could have implemented linear/editable History based processing in their history log EONS ago, but instead they chose to not even make the parameters that were used in a particular processing step in the history panel even available/view-able so that one could identify, and reconstruct the process he/she used on other files, let alone actually have independent/editable access to each of the steps in the History Panel.

So they eventually tried to address those needs with two clunky replacements, “adjustment layers” and “actions”.

Neither of which is as effective, or elegant as a linear and editable history event list. Adjustment layers are very prohibitive because of resource consumption, and also can not be applied to many of the pixel editing features, or filters etc available in Photoshop. And actions are just like hitting record on a tape player, and recording the entire series of events as one big performance then pressing stop. Both are clunky and bloated, and in the end, both systems are riddled with plenty of mystery as to exactly what occurred, and how one arrived at their final destination.

Sad, but true.

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