I definitely would like to see that be rectified by helping in the official creation of some sort of entity of some sorts, so that greater public awareness can be raised about Rawtherapee, funds can be raised for things like development and site maintenance, more people can get involved, for a greater team of developers, implementation of good raw video GUI (maybe Rawtherapee raw processing engine and tools ported to Olive, or plugin for Davinci Resolve?), GPU acceleration and other performance enhancements.
I already know that the IQ and raw processing capability of Rawtherapee is the best I’ve experienced for raw editors, I just now want to see mainstreaming and expansion of Rawtherapee, kind of like what happened with Blender.
Way offtopic, but in Amsterdam there was a church called Church of Satan. It was located in the red light district - in an abandoned church indeed - and it was essentially a sex house. The owners had choosen the legal form of a church, because churches were (or perhaps still are) tax-exempt! State lawyers struggled for years to find legal means to stop this construction…
Indeed off-topic… A tax exempt charity (which is what we really want) is a 503c charity here in the U.S., but several other U.S. based groups, like elementary OS, have tried to get 503c status, but have been denied because the U.S. government doesn’t feel that Free Software is in the public interest. Forming a religious organization would give us the tax free benefits, and the government couldn’t do much about it.
We also have the Church of Satan here in the U.S., but they’re not a sex house, they fight for freedom of religious expression, often in hilarious ways.
Me too. I sin with Windows, Davinci Resolve, Reaper and Affinity Photo, and sometimes Microsoft ICE.
Other than that, most all FOSS, primarily Rawtherapee, but also Inkscape, G’MIC, Exiftool, Imagemagick, Hugin, occationally FFMPEG and Gimp.
I may use proprietary, but I am adamantly against any Adobe Creative Cloud fleecings.
Everyone has an opinion to which they are entitled - but £9.98 per month hardly constitutes a ‘fleecing’ for what is without doubt the very best rip in existence + the best DAM, cataloguing and soft proofing/print utility available.
When I first started photography back in the days of film my weekly processing bill was higher than my current annual Adobe bill for heavens sake - and that’s a fact, not an opinion.
“It’s alright for you - you’re a pro photographer” … as if a pro tog has money to burn.
Newsflash…pro togs NEVER spend any money unless they have no alternative!
I’ve used just about every raw processor that’s ever existed over the years - and none of them have ever been perfect for every shot on every camera. They were simply not flexible enough individually. So I, like most other ‘pros’ developed a workflow that featured two or three different raw processors. Until that is, I accidentally discovered RT5.4
I would still be as heavily ‘into’ RT as I am today if it cost me the same as my favoured RIP because now I have a raw handler that matches the unique power of said RIP.
That’s right, for me RTs USP is not the gratis price but its sheer power and flexibility, and if I had to put it on my tax return at the same cost as my Adobe sub then I wouldn’t be crying.
That’s only my opinion though, as the thread starter!
My anti adobe opinion is more about how much universalization and market dominance they have, think how people casually use the word “photoshopping” for doing any image compositing. Also, being locked into a suite that you must continuously pay into to keep access to your work is a recipe for exploitation, and are well positioned to raise prices. Perpetual use license software is much safer.
I do agree that I’d still use Rawtherapee, even if I had to pay lots of money to use it, as it’s that great and powerful.
that’s not true in the slightest Pat - bloody hell, even I’m not that stupid! THAT is the sole reason I’ve always advised to never convert native raw to DNG. But if I kicked Adobe into touch tomorrow ALL my work is all here on local drives where it’s always been.
If you are thinking that images in a Lightroom catalogue are actually stored in the catalogue then that’s a big mistake.
Pre CC Photoshop was well over £600 with a minimum £350 upgrade fee and Lightroom was around £60 - both originally on a 2.5 to 3 year cycle - so you can understand why the CC cost of just under £120 per year is so attractive. Now you pay something similar to the old upgrade fee, it’s constantly updated and upgraded at no extra cost, and you get Lightroom for ‘chucked in’ for free basically. So it’s all slightly cheaper, a lot easier on the cash flow, and always on the bleeding edge of dev.
But you are never in a position to be ‘locked out’ of your images - that’s a huge fallacy and needs correcting post haste.
As for market dominance - well, I see where you are coming from, but that dominance is down to PHOTOSHOP which is simply THE most versatile RIP on the market, always has been since before Ps One. And Premiere Pro/AfterEffects is the other thing that keeps Adobe at the top of the shop.
And don’t forget that Ps has been around since before digital photography - hell, I used it when it was BarneyScan and Adobe was just a glint in someones eye. Yes, I know that makes my ancient!
As an occasional user of Lightroom last year… You’re not locked out of your raw files, true, but you do are locked out of all the work you did (edits, cataloging, tagging, presettings, etc) if you stop paying the subscription. So, if you want to keep the work you did on top of clicking the shutter, you need to pay the subscription.
As for the rest, I do see and understand all your points. But we need to be scientifically precise when it comes to it. Current Adobe model is to keep you hooked to the subscription. They put a lock on your work, in my opinion (at least, in my experience, regarding the latest Lightroom).
Yes, you have a point there, but if you are planning on leaving Adobe Lightroom you’ll not be stupid about it, and you’ll do your prep work before you get divorced!
You can import/convert your catalogue to the likes of CaptureOne (frying pan to fire perhaps) or I’ve seen it said you can convert to DarkTable - though I have no clue if that’s 100% feasible.
As I said before though, it’s Photoshop that keeps me at Adobe, plus the soft proof/print module in Lightroom - if anyone has NOT used this then they are not qualified to say it’s not worth paying for.
That wee small print module has PixelGenius PhotoKit as its backbone - the joint creation of Martin Evening, Mac Holbert, Seth Resnick, Andrew Rodney & Jeff Schewe. Not a lot of folk know that.
Images in a Lightroom catalogue that have process settings and are classed as finished should be exported as archival TIFFs anyway, meaning they are now outside of the Lightroom ‘captive loop’.
The value in an Adobe CC Photography plan subscription is 75% Photoshop 25% Lightroom DAM/soft proof/print (if I only had Photoshop I could still use PixelGenius as a plugin).
You have one open source alternative - GIMP - and it’s a poor relation - if it wasn’t then I’d use it!
Lightroom as a raw dev is like a Ford Focus - it does it’s job to an ‘it will do’ standard for the most part; but it’ll never beat a Veyron in a race, and the Veyron in question is RT.
Basically you’ve got 4 separate things in the CC Photo plan:
Photoshop
Lr DAM
Lr Soft Proof & Print
Lr raw process
and all for the WEEKLY cost of less than £2.50: that’s 2/3 of a Starbucks Caramel whotsimedodah, less 1/4 a pack of cigarettes, or 2/3 a pint of beer - let’s get some bloody perspective!
The latter is not the best tool in the box, but the other 3 are class leaders by a country mile - it’s why I use 'em.
A good mechanic does not have just one of each tool and always uses the best tool for the job
Believe me, I’m not saying it’s not worth what you pay. I also can’t really say for sure, also because I’m not a professional in graphics.
But what I see (and what I guess many customers got unhappy about) is that Adobe decide year-by-year how many pints of beer per week you have to spend in order to keep access to your work. So in my opinion, that’s the very definition of locked-in. What if tomorrow the value for the price is not so great anymore? You may very well care tomorrow, of course, but it’d involve some extra-headache.
Anyhow, I think we’re quite a lot off-topic… but just to clarify my position here: I’m not pro or against this Adobe subscription system in itself.
For myself, I like this type of subscription for something that does not keep a lock on something I perceive as mine (e.g. edits I do to photos), like music of videos (if the subscription is gone, I don’t “lose” anything that I perceive as mine).
Ok, I’ve also gone way off-topic, sorry… we may span this into some discussion in the lounge, potentially.
Indeed it looks sketchy and I don’t like it, but as Paul wrote, PayPal doesn’t allow doing it any differently.
As far as I know, to accept money nominally for “RawTherapee” we would have to register it as a legal organization, and I’m certainly not doing that.
The solution is to use other platforms. Back in the day I decided not to spend time looking into them as they all were newish and looked sketchy, but now some years have passed and it’s clear which platforms are relatively trustworthy.
Thankyou, I really want to see Rawtherapee grow in mainstreamness and get a awareness/development funding positive feedback loop like what happened with Blender. As far as legal organizations go, my parents have experience in non-profits, and once I get out of college in a few years, I might be in a position to help start that up on the side of my main career, but still figuring stuff out.
I was referring to Photoshop PSD files, Adobe Premiere, After-effects and Illustrator project files, and edits done in the LR catalog, not the raw files, though your point that anyone competent would be exporting as rendered tiff/jpeg is well taken.
As for your points on Photoshop greatness, my thoughts. They have stagnated as of late and need more competition. Also, it is unhealthy for the raster pixel editor market to be so dominated, that Photoshop is used as a verb. Hence, I advise people to use alternatives to Photosh
Also, with the upgrade cycle and upgrade fees, you do have a point that it is now cheaper with Creative Cloud, but any budget conscious person would be skipping versions of Creative Suite anyway. As for bleeding edge of dev, it shouldn’t be something that you are locked into, otherwise, what is the incentive for proprietary developers to be innovative?
Thanks, I needed that!
Every Sunday people could gather and pray for new features 
